First published in 1898, ‘Dream Days’ is a collection of children’s fiction and reminiscences of childhood written by Kenneth Grahame. It is a sequel to Grahame’s 1895 collection ‘The Golden Age’ (some of its selections feature the same family of five children). The book is best known for its inclusion of Grahame’s classic story ‘The Reluctant Dragon’.
Like its precursor volume, ‘Dream Days’ received strong approval from the literary critics of the day. In the decades since, the book has perhaps suffered a reputation as a thinner and weaker sequel to ‘The Golden Age’—except for its single hit story. In one modern estimation, both books “paint a convincingly unsentimental picture of childhood, with the adults in these sketches totally out of touch with the real concerns of the young people around them, including their griefs and rages.” Its concern is chiefly with the lands of imagination, ranging from a reconnaissance of men of solitude, a disastrous introduction of a girl to the narrator’s private castle in the clouds, derring-do on the high seas, and, of course, an encounter with a dragon. Its concluding bittersweet story bids a reluctant farewell to the dream days of childhood.
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Summary by Wikipedia and Catharine Eastman)