Walking into spiderwebs...

I have had a lousy week. One thing happened after another, culminating in a trip to the hospital yesterday with what ended up being a kidney stone. My kids are sick, the weather is lousy (especially considering that we had to sit at the football game Friday night in the rain so that Betsy could cheer), I am afraid that I have taken on too much with my volunteering for the year. I'm whiny.

Anyway, I did finish an excellent book last Saturday and had every intention of blogging about it before my nightmare of a week reared its head. It is called The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims. It is a really fascinating look at E.B. White's life. He was so interested in animals and spiders and really getting what he was talking about right.

Betsy and I have read Charlotte's Web twice now. I like to read it to her just before we go to the fair. It gives us such an appreiciation for what all goes into raising an animal. It is an excellent choice for kids who aren't quite ready to sit still for long periods of time because the chapters are quite short. (Betsy always says read more, we are used to long chapeters around here). It is such a moving book. Betsy cried the first time that I read it. It gets right to the point-Charlotte dies all alone, and no one ever knew that a certain spider had had so much to do with the outcome of the fair.

E.B. White based Charlotte's Web on his own farm and also on his childhoods spent in Maine. His whole life sort of culminated in this book. He also, of course, wrote Stuart Little. I read this to Betsy a while ago. My only experience with it prior to that was the movie with Michael J. Fox. The book is very, very different and downright odd. The biography illuminated me as to why and what White was trying to say. I think that I will get so much more out of it the next time we tackle it.

White wrote only one other book, The Trumpet of the Swans. We own it but have yet to read it. Sims only spends a few pages on it, so I still know little about it. When we get to it, I'll tell you my opinion of it.

I'm glad that it's Saturday, I'm ready for a new week. Hopefully it will go a little better...