Wisecracking Bob, who is a little bit Chihuahua among other things, now lives with his girl, Julia, and her parents. Tiny, sassy Bob the dog, friend of The One and Only Ivan (2012), returns to tell his tale. The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans-are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too. 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. Longtime fans and new readers alike will devour this.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. Levine references the Portuguese fairy tale “The False Prince and the True” and “Beauty and the Beast” to explore social prejudice, although Evie’s experiences as an ogre ultimately seem to reinforce how different she is more than they encourage solidarity. Even though she ministers to plague-stricken humans honorably, she faces suspicion and hostility, but she also gains loyal friends and learns valuable lessons about love.
A chance encounter soon draws Evie back to human civilization. But will he propose? Though her time with the band is limited, her first-person narrative style meticulously notes her observations (“ogre hands are blink fast,” and “the ogre heart has a triple beat”). Hoping to learn persuasion in order to obtain a proposal, Evie joins a band of ogres and promptly falls for their human captive: a silver-tongued merchant named Peter. Ogres are hated and feared by Kyrrians: hairy, short-tempered, odoriferous, and magically persuasive, they eat humans and livestock with equal zeal. To punish Evie for rejecting an “exemplary” suitor, Lucinda transforms her into an ogre and decrees that she must accept a proposal within 62 days or remain an ogre forever.
When 15-year-old healer Evie rejects her best friend’s marriage proposal in front of the fairy Lucinda, she unknowingly sets off a kingdomwide chain of events that will shape the course of Kyrrian history.
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