'Owes a little to Beatrix Potter in its ironical humour and to Edward Lear in the style of its drawings, though Tolkien's approach is less grotesque and more delicate than Lear's.' Humphrey Carpenter
'A celebration, in the spirit of The Wind in the Willows, of a vanished, vulgar England where everybody did - and spoke - exactly as he pleased, and life was consequently a series of amiable abrupt collisions, feebly refereed by the police in the shape of Sergeant Boffin. Although the book ought to feel dated, ... dating has done little harm to Tom Kitten or Mr Badger, and there seems no reason why it should here.' Tom. Shippey, Times Literary Supplement
'A celebration, in the spirit of The Wind in the Willows, of a vanished, vulgar England where everybody did - and spoke - exactly as he pleased, and life was consequently a series of amiable abrupt collisions, feebly refereed by the police in the shape of Sergeant Boffin. Although the book ought to feel dated, ... dating has done little harm to Tom Kitten or Mr Badger, and there seems no reason why it should here.' Tom. Shippey, Times Literary Supplement