Charlotte's Web

 

Book, 1952

 

Premise - A young pig named Wilbur is terrified to find out that his owner plans to slaughter him for food in the winter. Wanting to save his own life, he asks for help from his friend Charlotte, the spider, who develops a plan to save the pig by making the farmer realize how special he truly is.

Review - I would not have expected to have re-read this in adulthood, but I am so glad I did. I understand now why it's such a classic, having not remembered the plot of this book at all from having read it as a young child. This is one of the cutest books I have ever read. Wilbur is so sweet.

I read this because for 10-to-try 2021, one of the categories was "Read a book with nonhuman characters" which was harder to find than I thought, given the fact that I have hundreds of books on my wishlist. I decided on Charlotte's Web because the actress Evanna Lynch had it as the first pick for her book club. I don't imagine I'll read the rest of the books she recommended as her book club/podcast have an exclusively vegan audience that I do not fit into. I understand the appeal of Charlotte's Web to vegans as well as it's general appeal so it motivated me to read it.

I was also lucky to have experienced this through the audiobook, which is magically narrated by Meryl Streep with different voice actors for every character. And the characters truly come to life - I experienced this kind of like an audio play. The voice for Wilbur was particularly innocent and sweet and memorable.

 

What makes the story so endearing is Wilbur's naivete. It creates a humorous dynamic between him and the spider, Charlotte, who is incredibly intelligent, talented, and helpful. And part of what makes me sad is that Wilbur gets all of the credit and praise, while Charlotte's hard work is ignored. She's truly the hero of the story, and it's important that the book was named after her. When Charlotte writes in her web about Wilbur, the whole of the world is fascinated with Wilbur. Only one character (and I believe it was a female character) was like, "I think you have it all wrong? Sounds like the special one is the spider, who somehow can write in webs, and not the pig..." But Wilbur is so sweet and innocent, it's impossible not to want to help him. 

 

There were times when I was afraid that the direction this story was taken was that it was all in Fern's imagination. That's because several times, the notion of Fern's imagination was directly questioned, as the adults worried for her when she said she could talk to the animals. But once the adults started to realize the animals legitimately were causing miracles, my heart softened a bit. The reaction was, "Oh, Fern was correct all along!" which is exactly what I want to get out of a fantasy book. If it had been a thematic play on children's imaginations, I would have gone all Life of Pi and been like screw that, we're pretending Charlotte really could write words in her web. (91/100)

Quote - “It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn't catch the remark because I wasn't paying attention.”

What to read for - I highly recommend this audiobook version because all of the voice actors were incredible. Charlotte was insightful, Wilbur was humble, Fern was headstrong, Templeton was mischievous... it just really helped the story come alive.

 

If you liked this book, I'd recommend Stuart Little!

Written by E.B. White

Published by Harper & Brothers