Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

(Book Review--Children's Literature)

Started: August 2, 2021

Finished: August 3, 2021

Summary

Revisiting a classic from childhood.  This book is a classic for a reason.  E.B. White is one of the masters of English prose, and the descriptive passages in this book are really good.   The conversations between the farm animals are also really funny, and there is a lot of charm in this book.  

And yet, it’s also a lot darker than I remember.  Wilbur himself is saved from being butchered, true, but the book clearly exists in a world where plenty of pigs just like Wilbur are butchered every winter.  Add in Charlotte’s famous poignant death at the end, and this is a very morbid book for a children’s book.  But then, perhaps that’s part of the reason people remember it. (122 words)

[That's me attempting to be concise.  If you want my usual long-winded version, continue on to The Full Review]

My History With this Book 

So, like everyone else, this book was a huge part of my childhood. (*1)

The memory gets a bit hazy, but I don't think I actually physically read this book as a child.  I'm pretty sure it was only read to me.

Our elementary school teacher read it aloud to us during our daily story time.

In fact, I think I encountered this story multiple times between 1st and 4th grade.  I don't remember exactly, but I feel like this book was used for story time in more than one grade.  

And at some point, the 1973 cartoon movie (W)  was also shown to us in school.  I think in 4th grade? (*2)

I enjoyed this book well enough in elementary school.  I always looked forward to story time every day.  But at the same time, I do have to admit I was never enthralled with it.  It never captured my imagination in the same way as Star Wars or Treasure Island or any of the big adventure stories.  

(I think this is a classic example of a popular children's story that children--or at least young boys--would never choose for themselves.  It's a classic because it is read to children, not because children inherently gravitate towards it.  Or am I wrong about that?)

Nevertheless, it was a big part of my childhood, so just like everyone else, I now look back on it with some nostalgia.

Why I'm Re-Reading it Now

So, as I've mentioned on this blog before, I've been making use of the website esl-bits.net  as a way to recommend extra reading and listening practice to my students (*3)

Charlotte's Web is one of the free audiobooks available on that website--see HERE--so I recommended it to my students.  In fact in my post, Extensive and Intensive Listening Recommendations, I even included the message that I sent out to my students, which I'll repost below.  

So, for the last extensive listening recommendation, I gave you this website: http://esl-bits.net/ .  But the truth is, there's a lot of material on that website.  Some of the books are very difficult and probably not appropriate for you.  So you may need some help navigating that website and finding the easier material, and that's what I'll try to do over the next few weeks.  The easier material is, of course, the children's stories.  The easiest story I can think of on that site is Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, which you can find here.  http://esl-bits.net/Novellas.for.ESL.Students/Charlotte/contenu.html  This is a classic children's story, first published in 1952, but still read to young children nowadays.  When I was in school, my teacher read it to us when I was in 2nd grade (so I was 7 years old).  So it's at about a 7 year old level for native speakers.  For second language learners like you, I suspect there will be a lot of unknown vocabulary in this story, but you should still find the main idea of the story very easy to follow.  It's a children's story, so the plot is simple, but it's not without its charms.  There's a reason why it became a classic.

As always with this website, remember to do this as listening practice, not reading practice.  Don't look at the text the first time you listen.  (I suggest either minimizing the window, or looking away from the  screen.)  Although there are pictures for every chapter that you could preview before you listen to give you an idea of what will happen in that chapter.  

If you do this for your extensive listening tracker, you can count one chapter for one extensive listening practice.  (You don't need to listen to the whole book all in one go.)  

There's also a movie version of this story which you can find on Youtube.  https://youtu.be/rv7A4tg7G1k  The movie has some minor changes, but overall follows the story in the book pretty closely.  If you're having trouble visualizing what is happening in the book, you may want to use the movie to help you follow the story.  You can watch the movie before you listen to the book.  Or you can watch the movie after you finish the book.  Or you can watch the movie alongside the book (i.e. listen to some of the book, then watch some movie, then back to the book, etc).  Whatever helps you more.

You can also watch the movie instead of the book.  If you do that, you can count the movie as one extensive listening practice.

To the best of my knowledge, none of my students actually did listen to this book.  (Or at least none of them listened to the whole thing.  I think a few of them may have tried out the first chapter.)  But after having recommended the book to my students, I started to think about it again, and to think about what a nice little simple story it was, that would be perfect for students or anyone learning English.  

I considered using it for an in-class book project (as I had done with Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh) but never got around to it.   

But then, when my wife had a birthday, I thought this would be the perfect book to buy for her.  (She's still learning English.)  And fortunately the bookstores in Vietnam had this book in stock.

And the book had full color illustrations.

It's not entirely clear, but as far as I can tell from the copyright dates, watercoloring was added to the original illustrations in 1999.  So if you grew up in the 80s or 90s, it may surprise you to learn that this book is now in gorgeous full color.

Original illustration

New watercolor illustration.  Taken from HERE.  (Although this online image doesn't do it justice.  The colors are much more vibrant in my physical copy of the book.)  

So the book certainly looks a lot more visually appealing now (*4).  Which is yet another reason why it makes the perfect gift.

So, I bought this book for my wife, and she absolutely loved it.  She loved the tory.  She loved the funny conversations between Wilbur and the other barnyard animals.  And she was constantly talking about it during the week or so that she was reading it.

Hearing my wife talk about different parts of this book reminded me that I didn't actually remember the details of this book at all.  I mean, I remembered the basic story well enough--Wilbur gets saved from the butcher by Charlotte, and then Charlotte dies at the end.  That much I remembered.  But I didn't remember any of the other farm animals, or any of the conversations between Wilbur and the sheep, or any of the other little details.

"You know," I thought.  "I'm probably overdue for a re-read of this book myself.  Maybe I'll get around to it someday after I clear out all the other books I'm currently working on."  (My goal is to finish all the books - on - my - Currently - Reading - list before picking up any new books.)  But then, I realized that if I don't grab this book and read it now, I'd never just get around to it.  Better to read it now while it's in our apartment.  

Besides my wife has been ordering and reading a lot more children's classic books (many of them on my recommendation) and I thought it might be fun for me to re-read them all with her.  And Charlotte's Web was a good starting point.  So I decided to try to squeeze this one into my weekly reading.

The Review

As you can see from my started and finished dates, I finished this book off in a day and a half.  And that's me reading at a leisurely pace.  I could easily have read it in a day.  So in the end, all that worrying about whether or not I had time to read this book looks pretty silly in retrospect.  I had forgotten how easy these children's books are to read.

This book is only 184 pages, and that's with big print and lots of pictures.  Plus it's not exactly taxing prose.  It's a breeze.  (I think I'm spending more time typing out this review than I spent reading the actual book.  That's the disadvantage of my book review project.  But at this point book reviewing is an ingrained habit.)

I'm not sure whether this book review will be of much value.  I don't have that much intelligent to say about this book.  Since it was a re-read, there weren't a lot of surprises, so I can't talk about my reaction to the plot.  And since everyone already knows the story anyway, and since it's a very simple story, what is there really to say about it that you don't already know?

So, fair warning that this review is going to be pretty underwhelming.  But I'll go through the book and write down the things that struck me as I read them.

I'm going to assume for the purposes of this review that most people are like me--most people were exposed to this book in elementary school and vaguely remember the general plot, but haven't re-read it in years, and maybe don't remember all the details.  I'm going to assume you know the over-arching plot already, but I'll talk about some of the details--particularly the details that struck me on re-reading.

Somewhat to my surprise, the book starts out not with Wilbur as the main character, but Fern as the main character.  The first two chapters are told from Fern's perspective, and describes how she saved Wilbur from being killed, and then describes Fern raising the baby pig.  And then in chapter 3 we get a rather abrupt shift to Wilbur's point of view, and then all of a sudden Fern is reduced to a supporting character.  

After I finished the book, I checked the Wikipedia entry, which stated: 

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.

Well, I guess that explains the abrupt change in perspective then. 

So from chapter 3, we suddenly get access to Wilbur's inner thoughts and we learn that all the animals in the farmyard can talk to each other.  And immediately the question pops up: Wait! When did Wilbur learn to talk?

Wilbur next tried one of the lambs.

“Will you please play with me?” he asked.

“Certainly not,” said the lamb. “In the first place, I cannot get into your pen, as I am not old enough to jump over the fence. In the second place, I am not interested in pigs. Pigs mean less than nothing to me.”

“What do you mean, less than nothing?” replied Wilbur. “I don’t think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It’s the lowest you can go. It’s the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? 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. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is.” 

It's not clear if they're talking English, or some form of Animalese, but regardless, where did Wilbur pick up enough language in the first 2 months of his life that he can now debate the semantics of nothing.  And if he does know all this, then why hasn't he learned the colloquialism "less than nothing"? (I know, I know, it's a children's book.  Don't question the logic.  In this book, all the animals are born talking.  At the end of the book, Charlotte's children are also born into the world fully able to talk.)

The story of the book is pretty simple, but I think what has made this book endure is the style.  After all, this is E.B. White--the co-author of the infamous Strunk  & White Elements of Style (which was assigned reading in my freshman college English course) (*5)

Take, for example, E.B. White's description of the rope swing:

Mr. Zuckerman had the best swing in the county. It was a single long piece of heavy rope tied to the beam over the north doorway. At the bottom end of the rope was a fat knot to sit on. It was arranged so that you could swing without being pushed. You climbed a ladder to the hayloft. Then, holding the rope, you stood at the edge and looked down, and were scared and dizzy. Then you straddled the knot, so that it acted as a seat. Then you got up all your nerve, took a deep breath, and jumped. For a second you seemed to be falling to the barn floor far below, but then suddenly the rope would begin to catch you, and you would sail through the barn door going a mile a minute, with the wind whistling in your eyes and ears and hair. Then you would zoom upward into the sky, and look up at the clouds, and the rope would twist and you would twist and turn with the rope. Then you would drop down, down, down out of the sky and come sailing back into the barn almost into the hayloft, then sail out again (not quite so far this time), then in again (not quite so high), then out again, then in again, then out, then in; and then you’d jump off and fall down and let somebody else try it.

Isn't that perfect descriptive writing?  Can't you just picture that rope swing perfectly without any need of illustrations?  

[Actually as it happens, there is an illustration of the rope swing in the book.  But in my edition, the illustration wasn't until the next page over, so I could perfectly visualize the rope swing even before I saw it.  Also, Wikipedia highlights this passage as well: "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. "  But I didn't check the Wikipedia article until after I had finished the book, and I was impressed by this paragraph even before I knew it was praised by the critics.]

The early parts of the book are filled with descriptions of young baby Wilbur enjoying the simple pleasures of life such as warm milk, good slop, getting his back scratched, and falling asleep.  

“Yes, he’ll make a good pig,” said Mr. Zuckerman.

Wilbur heard the words of praise. He felt the warm milk inside his stomach. He felt the pleasant rubbing of the stick along his itchy back. He felt peaceful and happy and sleepy. This had been a tiring afternoon. It was still only about four o’clock but Wilbur was ready for bed. (p.24)

There are also several passages about the idyllic days of early summer on the farm: 

The early summer days on a farm are the happiest and fairest days of the year. Lilacs bloom and make the air sweet, and then fade. Apple blossoms come with the lilacs, and the bees visit around among the apple trees. The days grow warm and soft. School ends, and children have time to play and to fish for trouts in the brook. Avery often brought a trout home in his pocket, warm and stiff and ready to be fried for supper. (p.42)

It's all sounds very idyllic, peaceful, innocent, and good.  The perfect innocent book to read aloud to innocent young children.  And yet, anyone who is re-reading this book cannot give in to the peacefulness of the pastoral scenes completely.   We all know that there's a hidden horror waiting for Wilbur--a horror which Wilbur himself doesn't realize until Chapter 7.

“Well, I don’t like to spread bad news,” said the sheep, “but they’re fattening you up because they’re going to kill you, that’s why.”

“They’re going to what?” screamed Wilbur. Fern grew rigid on her stool.

“Kill you. Turn you into smoked bacon and ham,” continued the old sheep. “Almost all young pigs get murdered by the farmer as soon as the real cold weather sets in. There’s a regular conspiracy around here to kill you at Christmastime. Everybody is in the plot—Lurvy, Zuckerman, even John Arable.”

“Mr. Arable?” sobbed Wilbur. “Fern’s father?”

“Certainly. When a pig is to be butchered, everybody helps. I’m an old sheep and I see the same thing, same old business, year after year. ... (p.49)

So it's not an innocent little farm for baby animals.  Death is stalking them all.

Of course, as you know, Wilbur escapes his fate by the end of the book.  But that sense of innocence and goodness is hard to completely re-capture.  Even if Wilbur himself is saved, we now know that it's not a completely benevolent and innocent universe.  Other pigs will still be butchered every Christmastime.  (What about Uncle, the other pig that Wilbur and Charlotte meet at the county fair?  What do you suppose happens to him?)  And based on the old sheep's memories, it sounds like there were plenty of grizzly tragedies every year on Zuckerman's farm before Wilbur came along. (*6)

(Imagine a prequel to this story that takes place the year before, in which the previous young pig is dragged away to be butchered while the other animals look on cynically.  Or imagine a sequel.  It's stated that after the events of this book, Wilbur is allowed to live out his natural life on Zuckerman's farm without fear of being butchered.  But it's never stated that Zuckerman gave up raising pigs for meat.  There's a very dark sequel to be written in which a new spring pig comes to the farm, and Wilbur knows exactly what is going to happen to the new pig, but is powerless to save him.)

Initially I had it in mind to criticize E.B. White for not being able to control the tone of his story.  He had it in mind to write an innocent little children's story, and only introduced the threat of butchering to give the book a plot.  But he didn't realize that once he's introduced this element, he couldn't recover the innocence.

But... the more I think about it, the more I think that E.B. White never intended the book to be innocent.  Mortality as an inescapable part of existence is written all through the book.

Take, for example, chapter 1, in which Fern saves Wilbur from her father's ax:

“All right,” he said. “You go back to the house and I will bring the runt when I come in. I’ll let you start it on a bottle, like a baby. Then you’ll see what trouble a pig can be.”

When Mr. Arable returned to the house half an hour later, he carried a carton under his arm. Fern was upstairs changing her sneakers. The kitchen table was set for breakfast, and the room smelled of coffee, bacon, damp plaster, and wood smoke from the stove. (p.3)

Notice that while Fern saves one pig from death, at the same time her family is eating bacon for breakfast.  When I first read this, I thought it was a sloppy detail that E.B. White had overlooked.  But the more I think about it, the more I think he did it on purpose.  This book is not trying to sugarcoat the fact that most pigs will end up as bacon.  

And then, of course, there's Charlotte's death.  

The book didn't have to end like this, of course.  I mean, sure, in real life spiders have short lifespans.  But we don't have to go for realism in a book like this.  (This is a book, remember, in which a two month old pig can debate the semantics of nothing.)  In plenty of talking animal books, the normal lifespan of animals is not strictly adhered to.  It was a deliberate choice of E.B. White to make Charlotte's mortality the focus of the end of the book.

Or what about this exchange between Templeton the rat and the old sheep?

The old sheep spoke to him about his size one day. “You would live longer,” said the old sheep, “if you ate less.”

“Who wants to live forever?” sneered the rat. “I am naturally a heavy eater and I get untold satisfaction from the pleasures of the feast.” He patted his stomach, grinned at the sheep, and crept upstairs to lie down. (p.175)

The exchange ends there, and this is his last we see of Templeton in the book.  So the implication is that he's not going to mend his ways and that he's going to eat himself to a premature death.

Again, E.B. White didn't have to write that passage.  There's a deliberate choice here to focus on mortality throughout this book.

It's a bit of a strange book when you think about it.  I had approached it with the idea of returning to some of my childhood innocence by re-reading this book, but instead found that the tone of the book was much darker than I remembered.  Death and dying are major themes of this book.  And yet, all of that is interspersed with very innocent passages about baby animals, warm summer days on the farm, and children playing on the rope swing.  So what tone are we going for here?  How am I supposed to feel while reading this book?

And how did this book become a children's classic anyway?  What seven year old is interested in contemplating his own mortality?

I mentioned above that my suspicion is that this book is a children's classic because it's read to children rather than children reading it themselves.  I mean, left to their own devices, boys would pick out books about pirates, or soldiers, or adventures, right?  It was our teachers who picked this book out, not us, right?
But then, why are teachers so fond of this book?

Actually, come to think of it, a lot of the classic books of children's literature is about dealing with death.  Why is that?

Maybe (and I just spitballing here), maybe the books that deal with death and tragedy make an impression on us, and so stick in our memory more.  When we were children, we were exposed to all kinds of stories, but the only stories that we remember years later are the stories that had a big emotional punch to them.  And maybe that's why Charlotte's Web is a classic.

Other Notes

Fern

I mentioned above that the abrupt change in perspective from Fern to Wilbur in chapter 3 was apparently a result of the first two chapters being added later.  But actually a lot of Fern's story-arc seems that it was added later.

There's also a lot of scenes in later chapters in which Fern is present at the barnyard when the animals are talking, but isn't given anything to do, and barely reacts to what is going on in a way that seems strange.  (I mean, is Fern there or isn't she?)  I can't find this written anywhere, but it really seems like Fern's whole story-arc was tacked onto the story in a late draft.  Either that or E.B. White just didn't know what to do with her.

Speaking of which, Fern's story-arc is one of the things that I had completely forgotten about, and onlly remembered upon re-reading that Fen had a subplot.  There's this whole thing about how Fern's mother is really worried because Fern spending too much time with the animals.  There's a whole chapter--chapter 14--in the middle of the book which breaks off from Wilbur and Charlotte's storyline, and is just about Fern's mother talking to the psychiatrist.  

And then at the end of the book, Fern has become interested in boys, and no longer spends time with the farm animals.

Dialogue

I couldn't find a way to fit this in anywhere until now, but the dialogue between the animals, and the way that they are constantly using inappropriately formal registers of conversation, is one of the highlights of the book:

Wilbur looked everywhere. He searched his pen thoroughly. He examined the window ledge, stared up at the ceiling. But he saw nothing new. Finally he decided he would have to speak up. He hated to break the lovely stillness of dawn by using his voice, but he couldn’t think of any other way to locate the mysterious new friend who was nowhere to be seen. So Wilbur cleared his throat.

“Attention, please!” he said in a loud, firm voice. “Will the party who addressed me at bedtime last night kindly make himself or herself known by giving an appropriate sign or signal!”

Wilbur paused and listened. All the other animals lifted their heads and stared at him. Wilbur blushed. But he was determined to get in touch with his unknown friend.

“Attention, please!” he said. “I will repeat the message. Will the party who addressed me at bedtime last night kindly speak up. Please tell me where you are, if you are my friend!”

The sheep looked at each other in disgust.

“Stop your nonsense, Wilbur!” said the oldest sheep. “If you have a new friend here, you are probably disturbing his rest; and the quickest way to spoil a friendship is to wake somebody up in the morning before he is ready. How can you be sure your friend is an early riser?”

“I beg everyone’s pardon,” whispered Wilbur. “I didn’t mean to be objectionable.” (p.34-35)

Or slightly lower down the same page, Charlotte's habit of using the Latinate greeting "Salutations", and then immediately apologizing for using such an outdated greeting:

“Salutations!” said the voice.

Wilbur jumped to his feet. “Salu-what?” he cried.

“Salutations!” repeated the voice.

“What are they, and where are you?” screamed Wilbur. “Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?”

“Salutations are greetings,” said the voice. “When I say ‘salutations,’ it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning. Actually, it’s a silly expression, and I am surprised that I used it at all....

And much of the humor throughout the whole book is like that--the humor of barnyard animals trying to talking in overly pretentious ways.

And this is where the book gets much of its charm.  The conversations between the animals in this book are quite enjoyable.  (That is, if you can overlook the fact that grim death is hanging over everything.)

(Sidenote: The part about Charlotte using salutations is one part of the book I did remember from childhood.  I suspect I'm not the only kid who first learned the word salutations from this book.   
Later in the book, Charlotte's children use the exact same word when they are freshly hatched out of the eggs, which again brings up the question of where these animals are acquiring their language from.  If it's an obscure word, how do Charlotte's newborn children know it?  If it's not an obscure world in this universe of Animalese, then how come Wilbur doesn't know it?  Wait, I'm bringing logic into this book again aren't I?  Sorry.)

Small Farms
This book was first published all the way back in 1952.  (I know, right?  It seems so timeless, but it's a pretty old book now.)  I suspect the small family farm it describes no longer exists nowadays.  Everything has been taken over by agribusiness, right? 
I was going to write about how the details of small farm life described in this book don't really exist anymore in American nowadays, but then I decided that I don't know anything about modern life in rural America, and I should just keep my mouth shut.  So I'll through the question open to the readers of this blog.  Do small farms like this one still exist?

Banned Book

Apparently this book was banned in Kansas?  I don't know man, that's what the Chicago Tribune said at least.

In the past, it didn't take much to get a book banned, especially in places like Kansas. For example, in 2006 "Charlotte's Web," by E.B. White, was banned because "talking animals are blasphemous and unnatural."

That's got to be a mistake, right?  That can't be true, can it?

More information here:

Even arachnophobes love Charlotte's Web, a heartwarming tale about the friendship between a pig named Wilbur and a wordy barn spider called Charlotte. But a parents group in Kansas decided that any book featuring two talking animals must be the work of the devil, and so had E.B. White's 1952 work barred from classrooms. The group's central complaint was that humans are the highest level of God's creation, as shown by, they said, the fact we're "the only creatures that can communicate vocally. Showing lower life forms with human abilities is sacrilegious and disrespectful to God."

Footnotes (docs, pub)

(*1) Although, on my Youtube started video, Jim comments "I missed out on reading it in my childhood."  

I had thought this book was a universal part of the elementary school experience, but now Jim has got me wondering.  Was it only my teachers?  Is it only an American thing?  (Jim is British.)  Let me know in the comments what your experience with this book is.

(*2) As far as I can remember, I only saw the movie once.  And yet, for years afterwards whenever I remembered this book, the movie was more vivid in my mind.  The scene when Charlotte dies, for instance, I remembered more from the movie than the book.  Or the scene in which Charlotte's children fly away.  Or the Zuckerman's famous pig song.  

Perhaps movies just stick in my memory than books do.  

(*3) I've also expressed confusion in the past about how this website is still allowed to operate without being shutdown by copyright lawyers--see HERE and HERE.  So no need to write about all that again.  I still don't completely understand, but I'll just leave it and move on.  

(*4) The watercolors are credited to Rosemary Wells.  The back cover of the book says:

ROSEMARY WELLS, author and illustrator almost eighty books,  considers Garth Williams one of the true geniuses of twentieth-century book illustration and feels that had he had today’s technology available, he would have chosen to do the illustrations for CHARLOTTE'S WEB in full color. Applying a very simple palette befitting the story’s setting, Ms. Wells hopes her results would have pleased Garth Williams.

In my opinion, the addition of watercolors is an improvement.  But is there a controversy to be had about messing with an artist's illustrations after he's dead?   (I throw the question out to you.  Discuss in the comments.)

(*5) I'm assuming this was probably required reading for most people--or at least most Americans.  I probably overdue to re-read Strunk & White one of these days as well.  
Now that I've moved into linguistics, my main association with Strunk & White is their prohibition against the use of the passive voice--which linguists scoff at.  Also, many American writing teachers penalize students for using the passive voice in their writing (possibly as a legacy of Strunk & White) but (as I mention in this video) my British and Australian co-workers tell me that the prohibition of the passive voice is a distinctively American phenomenon  (possibly as a legacy of Strunk & White ?)

(*6) Speaking of death on the farm--the story is framed as though Wilbur is the only animal on the farm that's in danger of being butchered.  Now, I don't know anything about farm life myself (I grew up in the sheltered American suburbs.)  I guess presumably the sheep are safe because they're being kept for their wool.  But what about the goose and the gander?  What are they doing on the farm?  They're obviously not being kept for their eggs, because their eggs are allowed to hatch into goslings.  So are the goose and the gander also heading to the chopping block eventually?

Video Review (Playlist HERE)

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White: Book Review