The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is a classic for very good reason. We recently read the book to our children, aged 6 and 9, and they loved it. (Who says books need to be modernised otherwise children won’t enjoy them?*)

Using a few prompts from the book, chosen from an Instagram challenge, I gave myself a few limitations for these illustrations: 1) use lots of white space; 2) make interesting composition and perspective choices; 3) break some “rules” and try new things.
I also ended up choosing to have the five pictures symmetrically reflect one another: if you look at them in a row next to each other, you’ll notice that the two square images contain a spiral, anti-clockwise and clockwise respectively, and the first and last image upwards and towards one another. I know, it’s not that interesting, but I wanted to point it out.
See if you can find any other little hidden “easter eggs.”
Clue: there’s a big castle somewhere…

* I’m not going to hide the fact that I disapprove of dumbing-down children’s books. It’s not very respectful to children, telling them they won’t enjoy intelligent writing. Their horizons and vocabularies should be expanding, not shrinking; they won’t persevere through difficulties if everything is made easy for them.
Sorry for the tangent. If you enjoyed this little rant, you might also be interested in my Stubstack blog.