ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my husband, Rob Duncan, for his support and suggestions during the writing of this book. (He is, fortunately, a fan of the original.) Thanks to my parents, especially to my mother, for her excellent proofreading skills. Thanks to my writing group, The Fabs of Austin: Pansy Flick, Nancy Gore, Gaylon Greer, Jim Haws, Kim Kronzer, Diane Owens, and Lottie Shapiro. Thanks to my friends and relatives, Gwen Erwin, Elizabeth Sutherland, Val Brown, Lee Ann Urban, Carol Jarvis, Noeleen Thompson, Gary Cooke, and Robin Allen, for their support and comments.

Thanks to Nigel “Badger” McMorris and the Kenneth Grahame Society, along with Rangi Ruru Girls’ School in Christchurch, New Zealand. Thanks to Dr. Joan Lasenby, Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

Thanks to Paula Corey and Julie Dunlap for allowing me the use of their lovely garden in Santa Fe, and to Lynne Roberts and Laurie Sandman for making this possible. Thanks to James and Lou Ann Bradley for the use of their cabin in the mountains.

In writing this book, I sought the help of various experts. I hasten to add that any information I may have got wrong is entirely my fault, and not theirs. Thanks to Mr. Robert Noel, Lancaster Herald of the College of Arms, London, for advice regarding Toad’s coat of arms; to Mr. John Baker, Archivist, British Balloon & Airship Club, for advice on Toad’s balloon; to Mr. Ian Reinhardt, Catering Manager of Trinity College, Cambridge, for information regarding Toad’s postprandial wine. Thanks to Special Agents Byron San Marco, Shawn Kang, and Doug Kunze of the Austin, Texas, office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, for their advice on pyrotechnics and constructing a mortar. Those readers who are actually interested in building a mortar (just a small one, now), or a trebuchet or potato cannon, are referred to Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle.

Thanks to my editor, Laura Godwin, and Kate Butler and April Ward at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, and thanks to my agent, Marcy Posner of Folio Literary Management. Thanks to Clint G. Young, for his wonderful new illustrations, and to the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, for introducing us.

And, of course, my eternal gratitude to the peerless Kenneth Grahame, whose immortal tale of friendship has enchanted so many readers, in so many lands, for so many years. We will meet him at the River, where he lives on forever.