Hanging Out on Charlotte’s Web With Wilbur and E.B. White
Hello Everyone,
Not Quite Miss Rumphius here … Welcome back to the blog for the Children's Department at North York Central Library.
It would be hard to find many people out there who haven't heard of "Charlotte's Web," E.B. White's tale of the friendship between a pig named Wilbur and Charlotte, a small spider with a very big heart.
This book has one of the best opening lines I can'think of — "Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother — and it only gets better after that.
Part of what makes this story so good is the down-to-earth, effortless way E.B. White tells his tale. It feels like he must have spun it off the top of his head and simply set down the words on paper as he went along.
But here's the thing: if you thought, like I once did, that E.B. White achieved all his great storytelling with the greatest of ease, you would be wrong. Completely wrong.
That's where the other "Charlotte's Web" comes in. This one:
This little known book, part of the Reference Collection here in the Children's Department, is a behind-the scenes, close-up look at E. B. White as he worked on "Charlotte's Web. As it turned out, E. B. White was a very exacting and demanding writer. He slaved over his words and story. He had to write eight drafts of his manuscript — that's right, eight drafts, back in the days of the typewriter — to get everything exactly the way he wanted.
Like the original "Charlotte's Web", the Annotated "Charlotte" is highly readable and hard to put down. But don't take my word for it. Perhaps you can'take Charlotte the spider's word instead.
I like to think that, if Charlotte had been around when the second "Charlotte" was written, she might have summed it up like this:
2 thoughts on “Hanging Out on Charlotte’s Web With Wilbur and E.B. White”
When you said “Reference Collection” above, I thought it was only readable in-library but I was sure I had seen it on the shelf when we were looking for other books by EB White (Trumpet of the Swan was a bit too advanced atm turns out). I clicked through and it does have 11 copies that are hold-able. Just wanted to clarify that in case others had the same interpretation.
Hello Chris,
Thanks for your comment regarding the issue of holdable versus non-holdable copies of a book. You are right — the Children’s Department here at North York Central Library has two copies: a reference (for use in library) copy and a circulating copy. Right now, the circulating copy is out; the reference copy lives in the library every day, all the time.
The great thing about reference copies of a book is that they do remain in the library, just waiting for someone to pull them off the shelf and open them up. On the other hand, the great thing about a circulating copy is that you can’take it home. Or, if it’s in demand, you can place a hold on it.
Hope this is helpful,
Not Quite Miss Rumphius