| E.B. (Andy) White was distracted by a gray spider spinning a web. On his way to feed a pig (who lived in White's North Brooklin barn), the author of Charlotte's Web was intrigued. That spider was so interesting. Working hard, it could produce strands of silk at least as strong as similarly-sized strands of steel. How could such a thing be?
Not long before he encountered the spider, White lost one of his pigs. Distraught, he had worked hard to nurse it back to health. White's essay, “Death of a Pig,” tells us that the animal "had evidently become precious to me."
So ... what if it were possible for White to give the pig a different ending? And ... what if he included a spider, whom he called Charlotte, in his story? Thus is the background for the beloved book, Charlotte's Web.
In the 2006 film version, Julia Roberts gives Charlotte a voice while Dominic Scott Kay brings her friend, Wilbur (the pig), to life. Dakota Fanning, as Fern Arable, visits her friend Wilbur at the Zuckerman farm (modeled, in the book, on Andy White's own North Brooklin home).
In this story behind the movie, hear E.B. White read from his book, virtually visit his farm (in the “Down East” part of Maine) and watch a spider, like Charlotte, spin a web. Also learn how she catches (and eats) food, observe how she lays eggs and find out how her wingless babies (called spiderlings) can “fly” (or “balloon”) from the place where they were hatched.
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