E. B White's Charlotte's Web

Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White (1952)

It's a very easy book to read aloud. The sentence structure lends itself to being verbalised easily. And White's use of language is beautifully olden day. I remember that one of my professors said, "You want to book not to tell you what's going on, but to show you." (The 'showing' is not in regards to illustrations but in the use of language and sentences; structure and narrative.) This is one of those books.

I liked this little paragraph from the second chapter. I thought it is very cute in the way it shows us (the reader) the bond that has occurred:

Carrying a bottle of milk, Fern sat down under the apple tree inside the yard. Wilbur ran to her and she held the bottle for him while he sucked. When he had finished the last drop, he grunted and walked sleepily into the box. Fern peered though the door. Wilbur was poking the straw with his snout. In a short time he had dug a tunnel in the straw. He crawled into the tunnel and disappeared from sight, completely covered with straw. Fern was enchanted.

White gives enough information for us to draw the scene in our own minds and to enjoy the fanciful notions of feeding a thankful pig, who sleepily moves into his little kennel, as we, like Fern, watch what he's doing. White cleverly leads us through the scene without over powering us with every detail, or telling us outright what we should be seeing in our own mind's eye. There's a life breathed into the text which makes it interesting to read. It holds our interest as we watch it unfold.

I thought this bit was very cute too:

If she took her doll for a walk in the doll carriage, Wilbur followed along. Sometimes, on these journeys, Wilbur would get tired, and Fern would pick him up and put him in the carriage along side the doll. He liked this. And if he was very tired, he would close his eyes and go to sleep under the doll's blanket. He looked so cute when his eyes were closed, because his lashes were so long.

Isn't it fun to imagine a little pig in a doll's carriage falling asleep, like a baby would being pushed around?! And the little detail of long eyelashes makes it all the more 'real', in a sense.