The Wind in the Willows: Panic at Toad Hall (004)

Tells of the escapades of four animal friends--Toad, Mole, Rat, and Badger--who live along a river in the English countryside.

Grade 5-7 Plessix rounds out his graphic-novel adaptation of the classic with the climactic capture and recovery of Toad Hall, plus the closing celebratory banquet. His interpretation is a free one; not only does he add incidents and rewritten dialogue to the text, but he draws from the film, too, especially in his depictions of Toad and friends. Readers unfamiliar with both the original and the movie will flounder, as Plessix plunges into the plot without an introduction, has characters refer obliquely to past events, and cuts abruptly from scene to scene during the battle. His tightly spaced panels are so crowded with detail that the stoats and weasels blend into the wreckage they create, and it's sometimes hard to tell friend from foe. Libraries owning the previous volumes will want this one to complete the set, but it neither stands alone nor adds up to more than a sketchy homage. -John Peters, New York Public Library
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Gr. 6-8. The fourth and final volume of French artist Plessix's sequential-art adaptation of Grahame's classic maintains the child appeal of the original as well as the social commentary that Grahame pitched to older readers. This volume carries the story from the time Toad returns from jail to find his manor occupied by weasels through the eviction of the interlopers, the restoration of the property, and Toad's surprising discovery of the power of modesty. Plessix effectively differentiates among animals' speech rhythms while using beautiful watercolor panels to substitute for lengthy text commentary. It's difficult to see much anatomical difference between Toad's friend Otter and the villainous weasels and stoats, but Plessix renders period clothing and furnishings with great attention to detail. This isn't, of course, a substitute for the full-length novel, but the picture-book-size episode will certainly attract readers who know the earlier, richly visual retellings, and also convince some readers to search out Grahame's classic. Francisca Goldsmith
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