Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Charlotte's Web is truly a story of friendship-- friendship that stays with you forever, friendship for a season, or friendship for a lifetime. In this well-known story by EB White, Charlotte, the spider, helps to save Wilbur, the pig, by writing messages in her web. Just as Wilbur's future is assured, Charlotte's life comes to an end.

While I knew that friendship was the theme of the story, I was surprised by the depth and different types of friendship that were depicted in the book. Charlotte is a true, loyal friend to Wilbur but most notably, to me, she seeks no attention or recognition for herself. She is self-less in helping Wilbur. Isn't that a noble quality to find in a friend? Several times, White mentions that no one noticed Charlotte. Dr. Dorian even said, the web was really the thing of wonder not the words written in it.

Fern represented a different kind of friendship. While she loved Wilbur, she grew and changed, and her friendship with Wilbur lasted only a short time. I imagine that she still visits him from time to time, but she is not the same kind of friend as Charlotte. Through the months of Wilbur's youth, she spent a lot of time with him. However, just as he was about to be awarded the prize, Fern grew beyond her friendship with Wilbur. She became more interested in her new friend, Henry. Their friendship represents the more fleeting friendships that happen, a friendship that lasts a while but then dissolves over time.

While I know the story of Charlotte's Web so well as a result of reading it as a child and watching the old video of it many times, I enjoyed rereading it because little things made me chuckle. At one point, Charlotte says that "People believe almost anything they see in print" (p. 89) in response to Wilbur's protest at not actually being terrific. Wilbur waxes philosophic over the meaning of nothingness and the impossibility of less than nothing, saying: " If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something--even though it's just a very little bit of something" (p. 28). I imagined myself reading that as a child and saying, huh? There were other points in the story where White made observations about human nature. For instance, he wrote: "It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people" (p. 160). These are all things that I think children would miss, even though they could get lots of good out of reading the story.

Charlotte's Web seems to be one of the most well-known children's books and one that has stood the test of time. However, it did not win the Newbery. It was a Newbery Honor book but The Secret of the Andes won the award that year. I've never heard of it, has anyone else? There must be something quite special about a book that has stood the test of over 50 years and still enchants children today.