Charlotte's Web

"Charlotte's Web," by E.B. White, belongs to a special class of literature: a children's book which has much to offer to older teen and adult readers. White's wonderful story is superbly complemented by the charming illustrations of Garth Williams.

As the story opens, eight year old farm girl Fern Arable stops her father from killing a piglet who has been labeled the runt of the litter. The little pig, whom Fern names Wilbur, becomes one of the central figures in the story. Eventually he will be befriended by Charlotte, the wise and loving spider mentioned in the book's title.

White creates a sort of modern animal fable in which his barnyard characters can speak both with each other and with Fern. White's barn is populated with some truly marvelous characters. Special mention should be made of Templeton the rat. Gluttonous, sneaky, often nasty, but curiously sympathetic, Templeton is one of the great anti-heroes in modern literature.

Part of this novel's brilliance is the fact that the author makes a heroine out of a spider: a creature that many people probably regard with fear. Unlike a cute piglet or other barnyard creatures, a spider is a creature vastly different from humans. White's Charlotte is a truly remarkable character. White's witty, compassionate prose style is an ideal vehicle for telling the story of Charlotte and her friends.

"Charlotte's Web" is a masterful blend of whimsy, humor, gentle satire, and life-and-death drama. But above all, it is a powerful story of friendship. Deeply moving and superbly written, this is a book which, I believe, will endure as a treasured classic.

Natural History

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all the journey down through space,
In cool decent, and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place
From which she started.

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning.

E. B. White, November 1929

As the poem Natural History, written some 23 years before Charlotte's Web indicates, EB White had a long fascination with spiders and their webs and the truth to be discerned in them. In fact, he was enamored of the natural world in general and his desire to be closer to the land led him to move to a Maine farm in 1939. It was in the farm life and specifically in the comfort of the barn that the inspiration for this children's classic came to him :

As for Charlotte's Web, I like animals and my barn is a very pleasant place to be, at all hours. One
day when I was on my way to feed the pig, I began feeling sorry for the pig because, like most
pigs, he was doomed to die. This made me sad. So I started thinking of ways to save a pig's life. I
had been watching a big grey spider at her work and was impressed by how clever she was at
weaving. Gradually I worked the spider into the story that you know, a story of friendship and
salvation on a farm.

From these humble beginnings he wove an enduring tale of love and loyalty, life and death, and, perhaps unnoticed by most of us until adulthood, of the comic ingenuousness of man, and of the value of knowledge and a big vocabulary.

White, renowned as an essayist, wrote so clearly and fluidly that the pages whiz by. And if you get a chance to listen to the audio version that he reads himself, it is the performance of a master storyteller. Though a native New Yorker (Mt. Vernon anyway), White had by then picked up the rhythm and accents of a New Englander. In addition, he tells the story with apparent affection for his creations, love of the barnyard, and amusement at the goings on.

I was trying to figure out what made it all so magical and then I found this quote in which he described his own work (What Am I Saying To My Readers He ?, May 14, 1961, NY Times) :

What am I saying to my readers? Well, I never know. Writing to me is not an exercise in addressing
readers, it is more as though I were talking to myself while shaving. My foray into the field of
children's literature was an accident, and although I do not mean to suggest that I spun my two
yarns in perfect innocence and that I did not set about writing "Charlotte's Web" deliberately,
nevertheless, the thing started innocently enough, and I kept on because I found it was fun. It also
became rewarding in other ways--and that was a surprise, as I am not essentially a storyteller and
was taking a holiday from my regular work.

All that I ever hope to say in books is that I love the world. I guess you can find that in there, if
you dig around. Animals are part of my world and I try to report them faithfully and with respect.

He succeeded quite brilliantly in the task he set himself. I know of no work of literature by any author that better expresses respect for animals and love for the world.

GRADE : A+

One of the best reasons for having children is having an excuse to read Charlotte's Web. I just finished reading it to my youngest child, and cried just as hard as a did when I first read it to her brother a decade ago.

The story is about a spider who saves a pig from being turned into bacon and pork chops by weaving words to describe him into her web, convincing everyone that a miracle has occurred, and that there must be something very special about this pig.

Charlotte, the spider, is kind, noble, and brave ? a model of perfect friendship. Wilbur, the pig, is childlike and innocent at the beginning, but he grows wiser under Charlotte's influence throughout the book. The book is beautifully written in simple, graceful language. It's just a pleasure to read from beginning to end.

There is one thing that anyone planning to read the book to a young child ought to know. At the end, after laying her eggs, Charlotte dies. I had actually forgotten about that when I started reading the book to my 6-year-old recently, and when, halfway through the book, I remembered, I was a little worried about what her reaction would be. But as I got closer and closer to Charlotte's death, I realized how skillfully E.B. White handled the scene. For a couple of chapters before, you see Charlotte growing weaker and weaker. My daughter kept moving closer to me, sensing, I'm sure, that something was wrong. Charlotte's death doesn't come as a shock. Even a kindergartner seemed to sense that it was coming. More important, in the scene after Charlotte dies, Wilbur guards her eggs until her babies are born, and while most of them fly away, three baby spiders stay behind and become his friends. He's able to guide them the way Charlotte guided him, which gives a wonderful sense of continuity.

I don't think Charlotte's death is a reason not to read the book to a child, but I think if you're planning to read it to a child under 8 or so, you should read it to yourself first to be sure your child is ready for it.

Can't imagine saying something about E.B. White's children's classic "Charlotte's Web" that 148 others here (more around the world) have not. But experiencing it twice (having it read to me in fifth grade nearly 30 years ago, and reading it to my daughter recently) has allowed me to greater appreciate the book's meaning and accomplishment.

Many children will never experience life on a farm or visit a county fair (the two major book settings). White and his illustrators picture that life sensually and beautifully. The story of Wilbur (pig) and Charlotte's (spider's)friendship, what she does to save him, the toll it takes on her, and her eventual legacy, recalls the unconditional love mothers have for their children. (Fern, the Arables' daughter who saves Wilbur's life at the start, retreats from the storyline as her interest shifts from animals to boys.)

All this is told amidst word backgrounds of warm summer days, dank cellars, midways filled with discarded food and paper, cellar barns filled by scents of straw, manure, and slops. (Who but White could've described the leftovers fed to Wilbur and actually make them sound delicious?)

White's gift for character also shows most interestingly in the rat Templeton, who many may identify with. Tough, clever, self-serving, defensive, but valiant in the end, he adds much needed sour spike to essential scenes that may have otherwise been too sweet (his negotiation with Wilbur over Charlotte's egg sac is one example) Templeton's self-desciption at book's end of "living for the pleasures of the feast," summarize in a way what makes life and what we do for each other in it worth the trouble. Essential reading for children and adults.

"The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days of the whole year - the days when summer is changing into fall - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change."

There are powerful messages that every child longs to hear: life is special and worth cherishing at all costs - and against all odds. That is the backdrop for this tale. I read this book in the third grade and I'm now reading it aloud to my children at bedtime.

On my daughter's level, the animals talk. Great fun. And on my sons' level, we struggle to survive and have to plan for the future (but how?). Oh yeah, spiders are cool too.

So much of E.B.White's prose is visceral - looking across a pasture at dusk: the smell of horses, the slanted rays of the sun illuminating small vortices of insects, the nearby sounds of crops shaking in the breeze, the pink hues of the sky. This is the world of Charlotte's Web. Against this pastoral beauty, the main themes of this book center on mortality and friendship. Life is tragically ephemeral whether this is the life of a runt pig, or the fate of the same spring pig.

My children marvel that in a great hour of need, desperately alone, a heroine comes in the most unlikely of forms. We learn that perhaps the greatest obstacle to salvation isn't the effort of a savior, but rather the assent of a trusting soul - "But Charlotte," said Wilbur, "I'm not terrific."

Little minds (and big ones too) can wrestle with big ideas when reading this book. Just what is our purpose while we are in this "barnyard"? Is it to play the role of the rescuer or rescued. Or do we standby like the sheep and geese, and even self absorbed rats can be deliverers sometimes too.

"It's not often that someone comes along who is a true friend . . ." maybe the most applicable truth in this tale. As I read this book at night, I look at my children, who are growing up before my very eyes. I hope we learn from this book to be rescuers, to have the humility to be rescued, and to treasure our true friends. I turn off the lights and in the distance I hear the crickets, warning me that summertime cannot last forever.

DON'T EVEN THINK OF DEPRIVING YOUR CHILDREN OF THIS BOOK.