It’s 1908 and times are hard. All very well for rich River Bankers, who can afford hobbies, excursions, and an endless round of pleasure, but Wild Wooder Baxter Ferret has to work appalling hours to support his widowed mother and hungry siblings. Baxter has a passion, though - engines - and when his employer buys the mighty Throgmorton Squeezer, he finds happiness as its driver and mechanic. Until one night, out of a pitch-black snowstorm on the edge of the Wood, thunders Mr Toad, the biggest Banker of them all…

Jan Needle's richly comic re-telling of Kenneth Grahame's masterpiece The Wind in the Willows can be read as political satire, but there's so much more to be enjoyed. Though the Wood is cold and unemployment bleak, it only takes an old sea rat with an accordion and a nip of Daisy Ferret's special brew to get the stoats and weasels partying - and plotting revolution. It’s a glorious, exuberant read, enhanced by Willie Rushton’s splendid illustrations.

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