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Dream Days is a collection of children's fiction and reminiscences of childhood written by Kenneth Grahame. A sequel to the 1895 collection The Golden Age (some of its selections feature the same family of five children), Dream Days was first published in 1898 under the imprint John Lane: The Bodley Head. The first six selections in the book had been previously published in periodicals of the day – in The Yellow Book and the New Review in Britain and in Scribner's Magazine in the U.S. The book is best known for its inclusion of Grahame's classic story "The Reluctant Dragon".

In the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters stood on pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that one of us would be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and without regard to his own preferences, to wrestle with the inflections of some idiotic language long rightly dead; while another, from some fancied artistic tendency which always failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning to hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with tears of weariness or of revolt.

Dream Days is a collection of children’s fiction and reminiscences of childhood written by Kenneth Grahame. A sequel to Grahame’s 1895 collection The Golden Age (some of its selections feature the same family of five children), Dream Days was first published in 1898 under the imprint John Lane: The Bodley Head. (The first six selections in the book had been previously published in periodicals of the day—in the Yellow Book, the New Review, and in Scribner’s Magazine in the United States.) 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 reconnaisance 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.(Summary by Wikipedia and Catharine Eastman)First Page:DREAM DAYSBy Kenneth GrahameContents:THE TWENTY FIRST OF OCTOBER DIES IRAE MUTABILE SEMPER THE MAGIC RING ITS WALLS WERE AS OF JASPER A SAGA OF THE SEAS THE RELUCTANT DRAGON A DEPARTUREDREAM DAYSTHE TWENTY FIRST OF OCTOBERIn the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters stood on pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that one of us would be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and without regard to his own preferences, to wrestle with the inflections of some idiotic language long rightly dead; while another, from some fancied artistic tendency which always failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning to hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to either sex, and held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher than to crack a whip in a circus ring in geography, for instance, arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and queens each would have scorned to excel...

Dream Days is a collection of children's fiction and reminiscences of childhood written by Kenneth Grahame. A sequel to the 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".Dream Days received strong approval from the literary critics of the day. 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."

In the matter of general culture and attainments, we youngsters stood on pretty level ground. True, it was always happening that one of us would be singled out at any moment, freakishly, and without regard to his own preferences, to wrestle with the inflections of some idiotic language long rightly dead; while another, from some fancied artistic tendency which always failed to justify itself, might be told off without warning to hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to either sex, and held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher than to crack a whip in a circus-ring-in geography, for instance, arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and queens-each would have scorned to excel. And, indeed, whatever our individual gifts, a general dogged determination to shirk and to evade kept us all at much the same dead level,-a level of Ignorance tempered by insubordination.

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Dream Days is a collection of children's fiction and reminiscences of childhood written by Kenneth Grahame. A sequel to Grahame's 1895 collection The Golden Age (some of its selections feature the same family of five children), Dream Days was first published in 1898 under the imprint John Lane: The Bodley Head. (The first six selections in the book had been previously published in periodicals of the day—in the Yellow Book, the New Review, and in Scribner's Magazine in the United States.) The book is best known for its inclusion of Grahame's classic story The Reluctant Dragon.