Charlotte's Web is a children's novel by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams. It was published on October 15, 1952, by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a livestock pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur (such as "Some Pig") in her web in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.
Written in White's dry, low-key manner, Charlotte's Web is considered a classic of children's literature, enjoyable to adults as well as children. The description of the experience of swinging on a rope swing at the farm is an often cited example of rhythm in writing, as the pace of the sentences reflects the motion of the swing. In 2000, Publishers Weekly listed the book as the best-selling children's paperback of all time.
Charlotte's Web was adapted into an animated feature by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Sagittarius Productions in 1973. Paramount released a direct-to-video sequel, Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure, in the U.S. in 2003 (Universal released the film internationally). A live-action film version of E. B. White's original story was released in 2006. A video game based on this adaption was also released in 2006.
Video Charlotte's Web
Plot summary
The book begins when John Arable's sow gives birth to a litter of piglets, and Mr. Arable discovers one of them is a runt and decides to kill it. However, his eight year old daughter Fern begs him to let it live. Therefore her father gives it to Fern as a pet, and she names the piglet Wilbur. Wilbur is hyperactive and always exploring new things. He lives with Fern for a few weeks and then is sold to her uncle, Homer Zuckerman. Although Fern visits him at the Zuckermans' farm as often as she can, her visits decrease as she grows older, and Wilbur gets lonelier day after day. Eventually, a warm and soothing voice tells him that she is going to be his friend. The next day, he wakes up and meets his new friend: Charlotte, the grey spider. Charlotte gives her full name as "Charlotte A. Cavatica", revealing her as a barn spider, an orb-weaver with the scientific name Araneus cavaticus.
Wilbur soon becomes a member of the community of animals who live in the cellar of Zuckerman's barn. When the old sheep in the barn cellar tells Wilbur that he is going to be killed and eaten at Christmas, he turns to Charlotte for help. Charlotte has the idea of writing words in her web extolling Wilbur's excellence ("some pig," "terrific," "radiant," and eventually "humble"), reasoning that if she can make Wilbur sufficiently famous, he will not be killed. Thanks to Charlotte's efforts, and with the assistance of the gluttonous rat Templeton, Wilbur not only lives, but goes to the county fair with Charlotte and wins a prize. Having reached the end of her natural lifespan, Charlotte dies at the fair. Wilbur repays Charlotte by bringing home with him the sac of eggs (her "magnum opus") she had laid at the fair before dying. When Charlotte's eggs hatch at Zuckerman's farm, most of them leave to make their own lives elsewhere, except for three: Joy, Aranea, and Nellie, who remain there as friends to Wilbur; but none of them can replace Charlotte.
Maps Charlotte's Web
Characters
- Wilbur is a rambunctious pig, the runt of his litter. He is often strongly emotional.
- Charlotte A. Cavatica, or simply Charlotte, is a spider who befriends Wilbur. In some passages, she is the heroine of the story.
- John Arable: Wilbur's first owner.
- Fern Arable, John's daughter, who adopts Wilbur when he's a piglet, and later visits him. She is the only human in the story capable of understanding nonhuman conversation.
- Templeton is a rat who helps Charlotte and Wilbur only when offered food. He serves as a somewhat caustic, self-serving comic relief to the plot.
- Avery Arable is the elder brother of Fern and John's son. Like Templeton, he is a source of comic relief.
- Homer Zuckerman is Fern's uncle who keeps Wilbur in his barn. He has a wife, Edith, and an assistant named Lurvy.
- Other animals in Zuckerman's barn, with whom Wilbur converses, are a disdainful lamb, a talkative goose, and an intelligent "old sheep".
- Henry Fussy is a boy of Fern's age, of whom Fern becomes fond.
- Dr. Dorian is the family physician/psychologist consulted by Fern's mother and something of a wise old man character.
- Uncle is a large pig whom Charlotte disdains for coarse manners and Wilbur's rival at the fair.
- Charlotte's children are the 514 children of Charlotte. Although they were born at the barn, all but three of them go their own ways by ballooning.
History
Charlotte's Web was published three years after White began writing it. White's editor Ursula Nordstrom said that one day in 1952, E. B. White arrived at her office and handed her a new manuscript, the only copy of Charlotte's Web then in existence, which she read soon after and enjoyed.
Since White published Death of a Pig in 1948, an account of his own failure to save a sick pig (bought for butchering), Charlotte's Web can be seen as White's attempt "to save his pig in retrospect". White's overall motivation for the book has not been revealed and he has written: "I haven't told why I wrote the book, but I haven't told you why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze".
When White met the spider who originally inspired Charlotte, he called her Charlotte Epeira (after Epeira sclopetaria, the Grey Cross spider, now known as Larinioides sclopetarius), before discovering that the more modern name for that genus was Aranea. In the novel, Charlotte gives her full name as "Charlotte A. Cavatica", revealing her as a barn spider, an orb-weaver with the scientific name Araneus cavaticus.
The arachnid anatomical terms (mentioned in the beginning of chapter nine) and other information that White used, came mostly from American Spiders by Willis J. Gertsch and The Spider Book by John Henry Comstock, both of which combine a sense of poetry with scientific fact. White incorporated details from Comstock's accounts of baby spiders, most notably the "flight" of the young spiders on silken parachutes. White sent Gertsch's book to illustrator Garth Williams. Williams' initial drawings depicted a spider with a woman's face, and White suggested that he simply draw a realistic spider instead.
White originally opened the novel with an introduction of Wilbur and the barnyard (which later became the third chapter) but decided to begin the novel by introducing Fern and her family on the first page. White's publishers were at one point concerned with the book's ending and tried to get White to change it.
Charlotte's Web has become White's most famous book; but White treasured his privacy and that of the farmyard and barn that helped inspire the novel, which have been kept off limits to the public according to his wishes.
Reception
Charlotte's Web was generally well-reviewed when it was released. In The New York Times, Eudora Welty wrote, "As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done." Aside from its paperback sales, Charlotte's Web is 78th on the all-time bestselling hardback book list. According to publicity for the 2006 film adaptation (see below), the book has sold more than 45 million copies and been translated into 23 languages. It was a Newbery Honor book for 1953, losing to Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark for the medal. In 1970, White won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, a major prize in the field of children's literature, for Charlotte's Web, along with his first children's book, Stuart Little, published in 1945. Seth Lerer, in his book Children's Literature, finds that Charlotte represents female authorship and creativity, and compares her to other female characters in children's literature such as Jo March in Little Women and Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden. Nancy Larrick brings to attention the "startling note of realism" in the opening line, "Where's Papa going with that Ax?"
Illustrator Henry Cole expressed his deep childhood appreciation of the characters and story, and calls Garth Williams' illustrations full of "sensitivity, warmth, humor, and intelligence." Illustrator Diana Cain Bluthenthal states that Williams' illustrations inspired and influenced her.
There is an unabridged audio book read by White himself which reappeared decades after it had originally been recorded. Newsweek writes that White reads the story "without artifice and with a mellow charm," and that "White also has a plangency that will make you weep, so don't listen (at least, not to the sad parts) while driving." Joe Berk, president of Pathway Sound, had recorded Charlotte's Web with White in White's neighbor's house in Maine (which Berk describes as an especially memorable experience) and released the book in LP. Bantam released Charlotte's Web alongside Stuart Little on CD in 1991, digitally remastered, having acquired the two of them for rather a large amount.
In 2005, a school teacher in California conceived of a project for her class in which they would send out hundreds of drawings of spiders (each representing Charlotte's child Aranea going out into the world so that she can return and tell Wilbur of what she has seen) with accompanying letters; they ended up visiting a large number of parks, monuments, and museums, and were hosted by and/or prompted responses from celebrities and politicians such as John Travolta and then-First Lady Laura Bush.
In 2003 Charlotte's Web was listed at number 170 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's 200 "best-loved novels." A 2004 study found that Charlotte's Web was a common read-aloud book for third-graders in schools in San Diego County, California. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children." It was one of the "Top 100 Chapter Books" of all time in a 2012 poll by School Library Journal.
Its awards and nominations include:
- Newbery Honor Book (1953)
- Horn Book Fanfare (1953)
- Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal (1970) (awarded to White for his children's books: Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little)
- Massachusetts Children's Book Award (1984)
Adaptations
Film
The book was adapted into an animated feature of the same name in 1973 by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Sagittarius Productions with a score by the Sherman Brothers. In 2003, a direct-to-video sequel of that film, Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure, was released by Paramount Pictures. In 2006, Paramount Pictures, with Walden Media, Kerner Entertainment Company, and Nickelodeon Movies, produced a live-action/animated adaptation starring Dakota Fanning as Fern and the voice of Julia Roberts as Charlotte, released on December 15, 2006.
Stage
A musical production was created with music and lyrics by Charles Strouse.
Video game
A video game of the 2006 film was developed by Backbone Entertainment and published by THQ and Sega, and released on December 12, 2006, for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2 and PC.
See also
- List of best-selling books
- The Tale of Little Pig Robinson
- "Low THC cannabis ("Charlotte's web")
- Death in children's literature
References
Further reading
- Griffith, John W. (1993). Charlotte's web: a pig's salvation. New York: Twayne. ISBN 0805788123.
- Neumeyer, Peter F.; Williams, Garth; White, E. B. (1994). The annotated Charlotte's web. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0060243872.
- White, E. B. (2007). Some pig!: a Charlotte's web picture book. Illustrated by Maggie Kneen. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0060781610.
- White, E. B. (2008). Wilbur's adventure: a Charlotte's web picture book. Illustrated by Maggie Kneen. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780060781644.
- Sims, Michael (2011). The story of Charlotte's web: E. B. White's eccentric life in nature and the birth of an American classic. New York: Walker & Co. ISBN 9780802777546.
External links
- Charlotte's Web home page at publisher's site
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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