Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. Have you read it? If so, did you read it as a child or as an adult? In the foreword of the 60th anniversary edition, author Kate DiCamillo confesses she didn’t read it until she was 31 years old. The cover of the book scared her. But then “I was strong-armed into it by a writing teacher who held the book up as a miracle of storytelling. This teacher intoned the opening line of the book (Where’s Papa going with that ax?”) often and with passionate conviction. According to her, anyone who wanted to write must read Charlotte’s Web.”
DiCamillo quotes E.B. White: “All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”
She tells us about the things he loved–barns and pastures, dumps and fairgrounds, ponds and kitchens, pigs and sheep and geese and spiders and rain and monkey wrenches and Ferris wheels and people and seasons. And more.
You might say he even loved the New York Life Insurance Building–and the beauty in the building of it. He wrote about its rising for The New Yorker’s “The Talk of the Town” section in the March 17, 1928 issue. He titled the piece “The Ascension.” There is beauty in his first words. (My husband works in compliance for New York Life. That’s how I discovered this. Also, I’ve been begging to go see the building. I may have in the past, but I’ve forgotten.) The second Madison Square Garden was torn down to make room for it–615 feet high and 40 stories, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.
From E.B. White:
“The memory of old Madison Square Garden still haunts the Square, but a very tangible and very beautiful building has arisen on the spot to dispel it. One of the stirring adventures of this windy Spring is to approach the still unfinished New York Life Insurance Building across the park, with the blue sky of morning for a backdrop. At first the tower, still a dark web [my bold–get it?] of steel, seems predominant, with the supporting structure gleaming white, rising tier by tier majestically. Then as you get nearer, the tower becomes lost to view behind the vast ramparts, which swim dizzily forward out of white clouds, and put you in your place.”
And then he writes.
“. . . we were inducted into an elevator made of a packing box, and hoisted twenty-three stories. The rest of the distance to the spidery [again, my bold] tower was covered afoot . . . To emerge, at last, on the hurricane deck, five hundred feet above reality . . .with the canvas guards of the scaffolding bellying like sails in the breeze–this was a dream and a delight.”
It’s a short, fun read if you can access it.
Every word of Charlotte’s Web, DiCamillo asserts, bears E.B. White’s belief that we will face “small and large glories and tragedies,” but if we love the world and keep our eyes open to its wonders, it will all be okay.
This is not a for-kids-only book. If you haven’t read it, this is the time to rush, rush, rush. Stop everything, and read it now.
First Words from Charlotte’s Web – Chapter 1
Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
“Out to the hoghouse,” replied Mrs. Arable. “Some pigs were born last night.”
“I don’t see why he needs an ax,” continued Fern, who was only eight.
“Well,” said her mother, “one of the pigs is a runt. It’s very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.”
Do away with it?” shrieked Fern. “You mean kill it? Just because it’s smaller than the others?”
Mrs. Arable put a pitcher of cream on the table. “Don’t yell, Fern!” she said. “Your father is right. The pig would probably die anyway.”
Fern pushed a chair out of the way and ran outdoors. The grass was wet and the earth smelled of springtime. Fern’s sneakers were sopping by the time she caught up with her father.
“Please don’t kill it!” she sobbed. “It’s unfair.”
Mr. Arable stopped walking.
“Fern,” he said gently, “you will have to learn to control yourself.”
“Control myself?” yelled Fern. “This is a matter of life and death, and you talk about controlling myself.” Tears ran down her cheeks and she took hold of the ax and tried to pull it out of her father’s hand.
“Fern,” said Mr. Arable. “I know more about raising a litter of pigs than you do. A weakling makes trouble. Now run along!”
Later in Chapter 9, after Wilbur tries to build a web and fails, Charlotte says, “You can’t spin a web, Wilbur, and I advise you to put the idea out of your mind. You lack two things needed for spinning a web . . . You lack spinnerets, and you lack know-how.”
She goes on to say, “Not many creatures can spin webs. Even men aren’t as good at it as spiders, although the think they’re pretty good, and they’ll try anything. Did you ever hear of the Queensborough Bridge?”
” . . . do you know how long it took men to build it? Eight whole years . . . I can make a web in a single evening.”
Wilbur asks what people catch on the bridge, and Charlotte says, “They don’t catch anything. They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there there is something better on the other side. If they’d hang head-down at the top of the thing and wait quietly, maybe something good would come along. But no–with men it’s rush, rush, rush, every minute . . . I stay put and wait for what comes.”
Are you a writer?
Have you read Charlotte’s Web?
What is your favorite line(s) from the book?
Charlotte’s Web was hands-down my favorite book as a child. I read it over and over and over, never tiring of it. And yes, Sandra, you know I’m a writer, and I really think this book made me want to be one, even at a very young age. I’m going to have to read this one to granddaughter, Virginia.
Blessings to you!
Of course I read it to all my children. None left this nest without E.B. White’s timeless classic being read. The Elements of Style was also required reading when they were in high school. My youngest daughter was in a theater troupe that performed the stage production of Charlotte’s Webb. She lived and breathed the story for weeks and it’s still in her bloodstream.
It is The Great American Novel. I will not be dissuaded from this opinion. 🙂
Thanks also for bringing in White’s essay “The Ascension” and for connecting some dots for us. I’ve read several of his “Talk of the Town” pieces, but not that one.
My third grade teacher read Charlotte’s Web to our class a chapter a day. When Charlotte died, we all cried. The weekend following the Friday when she read the last pages to us, Mrs. Lowery suffered a ruptured appendix and did not return to school, and we were grief-stricken, the fictional death and Mrs. Lowery’s appendix having somehow gotten all mixed up in our heads. Two months later, my family moved from Arkansas to Maryland; I took with me on the long car ride some books purchased from the school book fair (the principal, Mrs. Moore, had let me take the samples, because my ordered books would not arrive for weeks): a book by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Charlotte’s Web. On the long, uncertain drive through Tennessee and Virginia to Maryland, E. B. White’s true-blue voice with its ability to bring you barn smells and animal sounds became my best friend — it was the narrator’s voice I loved, for its own sake as well as for the perfectly drawn animal and human characters it described, about Charlotte’s Web. It was my first favorite book, and I still reread it frequently.
You NEVER outgrow a story like that. In fact, children s’ books speak to me more than grownup stories because many grownups that lost their sense of wonder.