Dream Days

Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows, one of the classics of children's literature. Dream Days is a collection of children's fiction and reminiscences of childhood, and the sequel to The Golden Age. The Reluctant Dragon is the best known story in Dream Days. THE GOLDEN AGE and DREAM DAYS, the latter a continuation rather than a sequel, are stories or sketches of childhood days, brimming with adventure and pleasure. Here are the joys of youth which the grown-up "Olympians" can no longer experience and only remember, if at all, with acute nostalgia. It was the great poet Swinburne who wrote of golden age as "one of the few books which are well-nigh too praiseworthy for praise. The art of writing adequately and acceptively about children is among the rarest and most precious of all arts." "These enchanting books, golden age and dream days," writes Anne T. Eaton, "should be put within reach for the sake of those young readers who like to explore fresh fields and will recognize (in their pages) boys and girls very much like themselves."