In Penelope Lively’s novel How It All Began, a retired teacher named Charlotte t...

In Penelope Lively’s novel How It All Began, a retired teacher named Charlotte teaches a grown man, an immigrant to London, how to read in English. She begins with Where the Wild Things Are; and as Anton begins to catch on, she gives him Charlotte’s Web. This is how Chapter Five of How It All Began ends: “Later in the Tube, on the way back to the communal house, Anton opened Charlotte’s Web. He sat there in the shuddering, hurtling London netherworld, his lips moving as he traveled from word...