November 16, 2012

Read This!: Charlotte's Web

By E. B. White

Book challenge: Childhood favorite

BOOK CHALLENGE EST FINI!!!!

I have to confess I had a really hard time choosing a book to read for childhood favorite.  I originally thought I would read Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott as this was my all-time favorite book as a child.  But, then I got to thinking.  What if I read it now and I no longer like it?  It will thus be ruined.  Then, I was thinking what about my other childhood faves like The Secret Garden?  Do I really want to read them again?  I was in fear that I would ruin my good memories of these books so I picked out Charlotte’s Web because it was parading itself in front of me on my bookshelf (thanks Dad for sending me all of my childhood books) and I felt it could take one for the team if it had to.

Charlotte’s Web, for those who have never heard of it, is about a spring pig named Wilbur who is set for the slaughterhouse come fall.  Wilbur becomes frightened and doesn’t want to die so his new friend, a spider named Charlotte decides to help him out by writing words in her web so that people will think that Wilbur is special and not just a future piece of bacon.

As an adult, reading this book, I found it be darker than I remembered with all the talk of death and killing Wilbur.  Also, it occurred to me that everyone goes gah gah over the pig because of the words in Charlotte’s web but really they should be going wild over the spider.  And as I was thinking this, Mrs. Zuckerman says as much in the book!  I will also confess that Charlotte may have gotten on my nerves a bit with her high and mighty knowledge but, I did find myself thinking maybe rats and spiders and pigs are not so bad.  LOL.    

One last final note, I got a chuckle out of the fact that I wrote in the front of the book my name and “CHISTMAS '86”.  I missed the R.  I was always into doing stuff like that (inscribing books not misspelling holidays) as a kid.  Current me doesn’t have that sentimentality anymore.  Sad face.

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