And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring. The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. The adventures are thrilling, even frightening, and, while good and bad magic abound, what is most heartening is how Red and Goldie grow and brave it all together, selflessly helping each other.įairy-tale fun with resonant depth makes for another solid outing.Ī successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl. The most grotesque is The Magic Hearts, offered by the Huntsman-the same who saved the other Snow White (the one with the dwarfs) from her jealous stepmother and was cursed as a result. What he fails to reveal are the pitfalls, allowing Red to debate the advisability of immortality as she witnesses the effects of each method. Accompanied by new friends Goldie and Wolf, Red follows directions provided by a disgruntled dwarf: there are three ways to stop death. Red’s narration is dry and sassy, her mishaps colorful, her quest eventful and populated with other denizens of fairy-tale land. So when Granny becomes deathly ill, Red sets off to find the strongest magic: eternal life.
Red has powers, too, but she’s been afraid to practice after a particularly disastrous spell almost killed Granny years ago.
Granny, a witch, is none other than Rose Red, whose sister, Snow White, married a bear-prince.
In another of her fairy-tale mashups, Shurtliff brings inventive new dimensions to Granny and Red, whom readers met in the companion book, Rump (2013).
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