Abridged too far

I went to the library to get my daughter "The Wind in the Willows." What I found was a happy-face, Disney-esque conspiracy to rob the classics of children's lit of their drama, their passion and their soul.

By Hilary Flower

Mar 29, 2004 | "She's being Toad, from 'The Wind in the Willows,'" I explain, as my 5-year-old daughter, Nora Jade, careens around the other children at the park, crying out, "O poop-poop!" and finally wrecking her invisible motorcar in a blast of sand and laughter.

"Oh, yes, 'Wind in the Willows,'" my friend smiles. "We just got that -- but we haven't started it yet."

"Did you get the original or the adapted version?" I ask.

My friend frowns. "Oh, is there a difference? My husband brought it home from Borders. I just saw it sitting on the coffee table."

I frown, too, wondering if the book on her coffee table exhibits the telltale white binding with red and black letters of the Great Illustrated Classics. When my daughter first started enjoying chapter books, I leapt at the chance to share with her my childhood favorites. I had the copies of Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" and E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web" that my mother had read me and my brother, along with the "Stuart Little" that her mother had also read her. One day at the library I searched for some of my other favorites, like "Heidi," "Black Beauty" and "The Secret Garden." Soon I figured out that the library almost exclusively carried children's classics in a particular series, and I scanned the shelves for the Great Illustrated Classics, greedily filling my arms with them.

At home, I curled up on the couch with my daughter and began reading "Black Beauty." But was it really this simple, this sparse, I wondered? My daughter's attention had waned and I stopped reading to search the back of the book for clues. Sure enough, although the front cover and the binding offered only the name of the original author, Anna Sewell, small letters on the back said: "In a specially adapted version by Diedre S. Laiken." And the front matter added another player: "Edited by Malvina G. Vogel." I flipped through "Black Beauty" and wondered: What was missing? What had been added?

When we returned our stack of denuded classics to the library I pulled out the Great Illustrated Classics edition of "The Wind in the Willows." I could hardly wait to do the comparison. I found it on the title page, in small print: "Adapted by Malvina G. Vogel." So let's see what the publishers paid their little elf to do this time.

I flipped to the moment when Toad first catches his mania for motorcars, the inspiration for my daughter's careening at the park. In the original, Grahame ignites Toad's dream thus:

"'Glorious, stirring sight!' murmured Toad, never offering to move. 'The poetry of motion! The REAL way to travel! The ONLY way to travel! Here to-day -- in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped -- always somebody else's horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!'"

Toad, in the hands of Malvina G. Vogel, starts out with a similar exclamation but then alters course:

"'... Wonderful, glorious sight!' he murmured dreamily. ... That's the REAL way to travel, the ONLY way to travel! Here today, gone tomorrow! And to think I never KNEW! I never even DREAMT! Oh, what clouds of dust I'll kick up along the road! Oh what horrid little wagons I'll fling into ditches!'"

Out with Grahame's "stirring sight" and "the poetry of motion." I had laughed out loud when my partner read aloud to us: "Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped -- always somebody else's horizon!" But our friendly adapter dumped this deliciously grandiose sentence in order to kick up dust along the road. With seven more words, the "abridged" version is actually longer. As I paged through I saw that the chapter was based on the original, in the sense that you can more or less match passage for passage, but the words were only sometimes Grahame's.

This got me curious. The night before, my partner had read to us the chapter about Ratty and Mole searching for the missing otter child Little Portly. I had been slipping into dreams as he read, but roused myself when he came to the end. Had Ratty and Mole really encountered the demigod Pan? Had Pan really cast a spell of forgetfulness on them, to spare them from spending the rest of their lives wondering if the transcendent encounter had really happened to them?

Yes, I was told. The chapter was called "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn." Wasn't that a Led Zeppelin album, I wondered? "No. Pink Floyd."

I didn't remember any demigods in this book and was frankly shocked that a children's classic veered off into such odd mysticism. It reminded me of my discomfort at the way E.B. White made Stuart Little unlikable in places, and boldly explored the cruel aspects of creatures who eat one another in "Charlotte's Web." The more I read classic children's literature as an adult, the more challenges to my assumptions I seem to find. Personally, I like to be challenged. What would the adapted classic do with Pan, I wondered?

But I had trouble finding Pan and kept getting distracted by the pictures. The boldly ugly illustrations of the Great Illustrated Classics edition were such a stark contrast to the original ones by the legendary Ernest H. Shepard (also the illustrator of A.A. Milne's Pooh books). In the opening pages of my copy, I found a preface by Shepard in which he discusses the spirit with which he approached his drawings:

"Kenneth Grahame was an old man when I went to see him. Not sure about this new illustrator of his book, he listened patiently while I told him what I hoped to do. Then he said, 'I love these little people, be kind to them.' Just that; but sitting forward in his chair, resting upon the arms, his fine handsome head turned aside, looking like some ancient Viking, warming, he told me of the river near by, of the banks where Rat had his house, of the pools where Otter hid, and of the Wild Wood way up on the hill above the river, a fearsome place but for the sanctuary of Badger's home, and of Toad Hall. He would like, he said, to go with me to show me the river bank that he knew so well' ... but now I cannot walk so far and you must find your way alone.'

"So I left him and, guided by his instructions, I spent a happy autumn afternoon with my sketch book. It was easy to imagine it all, sitting by the river bank or following the wake of little bubbles that told me that Rat was not far away ...

"I was to meet Kenneth Grahame once again. I went to his home and was able to show him some of the results of my work. Though critical, he seemed pleased and, chuckling, said, 'I'm glad you've made them real.'"

Staring at the pictures before me, I wondered what a Great Illustrated Classic was without great classic illustrations. As much as I searched these new renderings for something appealing, the misshapen animals in cute settings made me yearn for a crayon to scribble over them, coloring-book style. I tried to imagine Kenneth Grahame meeting with this defiler: Would the "handsome Viking" have made a projectile of the book? I averted my eyes from the illustrations as I flipped through the pages of fat print in search of last night's chapter.

My next discovery was even more unexpected: Little Portly was not just missing from the river, he was missing from the book entirely! No Piper piped at the Gates of Dawn, either. The chapter was nowhere to be found. In Grahame's original, Mole/Rat/Badger chapters alternate with the rousing chapters of Toad's motorcar adventures, increasing the suspense, providing key thematic counterpoints and showing Toad's faithful friends becoming more serious about putting a stop to his self-destructive exploits. But in the library's Great Illustrated Classic, one Toad chapter led to another. Most of the Ratty and Mole chapters were missing!

For another test, I compared the first paragraph in both books. Here is Grahame's:

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat."

And here is the New Improved Version:

"Mole had been working very hard all morning doing spring cleaning in his little home beneath a large meadow. He had been working with brooms and dusters and a pail of whitewash. When his aching back and weary arms couldn't lift the whitewash brush one more time, he flung it down and shouted out, "That's it! Hang spring-cleaning!" He rushed out his little door ..."

Next Page: We know Mole's tea is hot because three curvy lines are sticking out of it. Can't you just taste it? Me either

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