CHARLOTTES
WEB |
About The Book
|
Charlotte's
Web is a children's book by acclaimed American
author E. B. White, first published in 1952, it tells the
story of a barn spider named Charlotte and her friendship
with a pig named Wilbur.
Illustrated by Garth Williams Publishers Weekly
lists the book as the best-selling children's paperback
of all time.
Aside from its paperback sales, Charlotte's Web
is 78th on the all-time hardback list, The book has sold
more than 45 million copies and been translated into 23
languages. It is a Newbery Honors book for 1953, losing
out to Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark for
the medal.
In 1970, White won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, a major
prize in the field of children's literature, for Charlotte's
Web along with his first children's book, Stuart
Little, published in 1945.
|
Spiders
|
In
The book Charlotte gives her full name as "Charlotte
A. Cavatica", revealing her as a barn spider, an orb-weaver
spider with the scientific name Araneus cavaticus.
Spiders are predatory invertebrate
animals that have two body segments, eight legs, no chewing
mouth parts and no wings.
They are classified in the order Araneae,
one of several orders within the larger class of arachnids,
a group which also contains scorpions, whip scorpions, mites,
ticks, and opiliones (harvestmen). The study of spiders
is known as arachnology.
All spiders produce silk, a thin, strong protein strand
extruded by the spider from spinnerets most commonly found
on the end of the abdomen.
Many species use it to trap insects in webs, although there
are many species that hunt freely. Silk can be used to aid
in climbing, form smooth walls for burrows and build egg
sacs.
Spiders reproduce by means of eggs, which are packed into
silk bundles called egg sacs or Magnum
opus. Magnum opus is Latin and means my Great
Work, |
The
Author
|
E.B.WHITE |
 E.B.
White was born in Mount Vernon, New York and graduated from
Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1921.
He picked up the nickname "Andy" at Cornell. While
at Cornell, he worked as editor of The Cornell Daily
Sun with classmate Allison Danzig who later became
a sportswriter for The New York Times.
He published his first article in The New Yorker
magazine in 1925, then joined the staff in 1927 and continued
to contribute for six decades.
Best recognized for his essays and unsigned Notes and
Comment pieces, he gradually became the most important
contributor to The New Yorker at a time when it
was arguably the most important American literary magazine.
He also served as a columnist for Harper's Magazine
from 1938 to 1943.
In the late 1930s White turned his hand to children's fiction
on behalf of a niece, Janice Hart White. His first children's
book, Stuart Little, was published in 1945, and
Charlotte's Web appeared in 1952.
Both were highly acclaimed, and in 1970 jointly won the
Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, a major prize in the field of
children's literature. In the same year, he published his
third children's novel, The Trumpet of the Swan.
In 1973, that book received the Sequoyah Award from Oklahoma
and the William Allen White Award from Kansas, both of which
were awarded by students voting for their favorite book
of the year.
E.B
White died on 1st October 1985.
|
|
