The title itself is an invitation. It appeals not just to the reader’s mind, but to her senses—a call to abandon the mundane and visit the riverbank to feel the wind on your face, hear it rustling the willows. The novel opens with Mole, “working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.” He has dust in his eyes and throat, whitewash all over his black fur. But, “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.” By the end of the first paragraph, Mole has quit his work to pop up into the sunshine—as I now invite you to do, by entering the world of this wonderful book.