Smash hit

Charlotte, White writes, “was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”

This beautifully written book has been a friend to me for much of my life; if you don’t know it, I hope you’ll introduce yourself and find a friend too. ()

EXTRACT
from Charlotte's Web
by E.B. White

“You mean you eat flies?” gasped Wilbur.

“Certainly. Flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty cockroaches, gnats, midges, daddy-long-legs, centipedes, mosquitos, crickets — anything that is careless enough to get caught in my web. I have to live, don’t I?” “Why, yes, of course,” said Wilbur. “Do they taste good?” “Delicious. Of course, I don’t really eat them. I drink them — drink their blood. I love blood,” said Charlotte, and her pleasant, thin voice grew even thinner and more pleasant.

“Don’t say that!” groaned Wilbur . . .

“Why not? It’s true, and I have to say what is true. I am not entirely happy about my diet of flies and bugs, but it’s the way I’m made. A spider has to pick up a living somehow or other, and I happen to be a trapper. I just naturally build a web and trap flies and other insects. My mother was a trapper before me. Her mother was a trapper before her . . .”

“It’s a miserable inheritance,” said Wilbur, gloomily. He was sad because his new friend was so bloodthirsty.

“Yes, it is,” agreed Charlotte. “But I can’t help it. I don’t know how the first spider in the early days of the world happened to think up this fancy idea of spinning a web, but she did, and it was clever of her, too. And since then, all of us spiders have had to work the same trick. It’s not a bad pitch, on the whole.”

“It’s cruel,” replied Wilbur, who did not intend to be argued out of his position.

“Well, you can’t talk,” said Charlotte. “You have your meals brought to you in a pail. Nobody feeds me. I have to get my own living. I live by my wits . . . I have to think things out, catch what I can, take what comes. And it just so happens, my friend, that what comes is flies and insects and grubs. And furthermore,” said Charlotte, “do you realise that if I didn’t catch bugs and eat them, bugs would increase and multiply and get so numerous that they’d destroy the earth, wipe out everything?” “Really?” said Wilbur. “I wouldn’t want that to happen. Perhaps your web is a good thing after all.”

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