“The Wind in the Willows,” published 100 years ago this year, is one of those books. I first read Kenneth Grahame’s classic when I was 14, and I have been going back to it ever since.

T he Wind in the Willows is the only book that ever put my children to sleep. Every other story, including Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon, created an adrenaline rush that made them long for ...