Hanging On By a Thread
For the first time in nearly forty years, I sat down to read a book from my childhood. In this age of instant information, downloading media on your PC, phone or tablet there’s something about holding a good old fashioned book in your hands. Turning the page to see what will happen next. Even stopping to take a break and placing that long forgotten bookmark to hold your spot. As I get older, there is also something about having a pair of reading glassed nearby. A lot has changed in forty years. What hasn’t changed is the story of a shy, nervous little pig who is desperate to make it through the winter afraid for this life and the spider who becomes his best friend.
Charlotte’s Web is a children’s book written by E. B. White in 1952. I took time on a Sunday afternoon to sit with my two dogs, Sydney and Buddy, and read this heartwarming story. Wilbur is the little pig at the center of the book. His life spared, he is tended to by a little girl named Fern and ultimately finds a home on her Uncle’s farm. Wilbur struggles to fit in with the animals he meets. Teased by the lamb, a goose who likes to talk, talk, talk, a dirty old rat and a sheep who puts quite the fear into Wilbur about what happens to pigs once fattened up on the farm. However, Wilbur discovers a grey spider who also lives in the barn and she eases his mind and they become best friends. Charlotte calms her new friend and tells him she won’t let him die and he will make it through the season. Unsure, Wilbur constantly asks what her plan is, all in good time.
One morning the farm hand enters the barn and reads the words “some pig” written in Charlotte’s web.
The family can’t believe what they’ve seen. Word spreads in the local town and visitors come to see the writing and that special little pig. Charlotte leaves additional messages about her friend Wilbur. The attention brought by this little guy spurs the family to enter into a State Fair. Charlotte travels with Wilbur but they need assistance and find it, unwillingly, in Templeton the rat. At the fair, Templeton works to find scraps of paper for Charlotte to use in her writing. Humble, the word chosen for Wilbur garners him third prize at the fair. He’s so excited and all of the attention ensures him making it through the winter and living a long life on the farm with his best friend.
All of Charlotte’s hard work for her friend takes a toll on her and she tells Wilbur she won’t be able to travel home with him. She spent her last night making a egg sac for her children, five hundred and fourteen to be exact. She entrusts Wilbur to take the unborn children back to the farm and see they make it to the spring. The shy little pig takes good care of the eggs and gets them back to the barn safely where they are all born that next year. Wilbur is saddened to see most of the little spiders leave the farm but three decide to stay with him. Wilbur names the three spiders and he looks after Charlotte’s children, grand-children and great grand-children through their lives.
Charlotte’s Web is a book that has been around now for sixty plus years. It’s a book about innocence, finding your way and friendship. It’s a book read by my mom when she was a child, by myself and in a few years my niece. A book every child should read and, like me, read again as an adult. It’s hard to find that in a book. Charlotte’s Web is one of those books.
