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Some people are lucky.  I received an ARC of this book several months ago.    I will never part with it.  Melissa Sweet has put together a masterpiece about a masterful writer, E. B. White.

Oh wait, wait, wait, am I cut off? So many other favorites!

Charlotte’s Web is is one of the best-selling children’s books of all time. It is about a barnyard pig named Wilbur that can talk, a barn spider named Charlotte that can write, and a young girl named Fern that stands up for her beliefs.

Allison Branscombe, author of All About China: Stories, Songs, Crafts and More for Kids, selected these five family favorites.

My plan here is to write about how New York City disappears out from under your feet.My plan here is to write about how New York City disappears out from under your feet. So I wanted to include a picture of Apocalypse Lounge, a bar in Alphabet City I began to frequent right after college. [...]

My plan here is to write about how New York City disappears out from under your feet.My plan here is to write about how New York City disappears out from under your feet. So I wanted to include a picture of Apocalypse Lounge, a bar in Alphabet City I began to frequent right after college. [...]

I have been reading Charlotte’s Web to my son. I began it on a bit of a whim, unsure if he was old enough, but he loves it — he was goofing off and naughty this evening, and promise of more chapters in the book about the pig turned him right around.

Anyway. Tonight, as Wilbur lay lonely and weeping in the rain, and as the voice of a friend called to him from the darkness, Byron sat up in bed and started guessing who it was. He thought it was the gander, which made no sense. He thought it was Fern. And when, in the next chapter, he saw who it was he said, in hush and awe:

A spider.

I cannot tell you how it was to re-experience that moment through him. I don’t even know if I experienced it; I think when I read this book for the first time I knew it would be about a spider. Also, I wasn’t as bug crazy as he is — if anything, if I was surprised by the voice from the shadows belonging to a spider, I was disappointed. But not Byron. He was thrilled, amazed, and delighted.

A spider.

His joy is my joy. And the joy carries with it a sense of gravity– knowing that this moment, like first steps and first words, is over in a heartbeat. Byron will never again reach chapter five not knowing that the voice belongs to Charlotte, a spider. He will never again, say in wonder: a spider.

Harry will get his letter from Hogwarts, and Ralph will ride his toy motorcycle, and who knows what else, but nothing will top that, ever.

At Powell's, we feel the holidays are the perfect time to share our love of books with those close to us. For this special blog series, we reached out to authors featured in our Holiday Gift Guide to learn about their own experiences with book giving during this bountiful time of year. Today's featured giver [...]

I teach ESL to adults and have often used children’s books as educational tools with these students who are trying to master English. I’ve read picture books to lower level classes, but the year I taught Advanced Conversation, I knew I needed something different.

Having taught lower level classes, I can say that in comparison these students truly did have a good grasp of English but they needed help to get to the next level. While they certainly weren’t shy about talking, I realized that this group still needed listening practice. The books chosen for the class were good — providing conversation prompts and vocabulary exercises — but they were ordered without their audio components.

Despite signing up for the class and despite their very real need to practice listening to English, my students seemed to regard listening practice as a form of torture and would groan whenever that part of class  began. I wanted to increase their vocabulary and get them into a focused conversation about a story. I thought Charlotte’s Web would work and borrowed the audiobook from the library.

The characters, the plot, everything is masterfully done. And of course as a child I didn’t realize how many words were being defined within the story, sometimes by a character and sometimes through context.

I introduced the story and we did pre-reading exercises with some of the more challenging vocabulary before listening to each chapter, but the idea was for them to listen to and discuss the story. They were not thrilled.

After one or two audio-only sessions, I won a copy of the 60th anniversary edition of book, so the compromise was that they could pass the book around and they’d spend a little time reading along and some time just listening. They were surprisingly fair about it. The stronger students let the weaker students read along longer. After a few weeks one student had her husband get her a copy at the library so she could read along the entire time.

Once, during a pre-reading exercise, I told the students the chapter they’d hear was called “Explosion” and asked what they thought might explode. One of the younger students, a man in medical school whom I suspect was looking for a more action-packed story replied hopefully, “The pig?”

While there are no exploding pigs, life and death are major themes of the book. This book also depicts a slower, more agrarian lifestyle that fostered discussion because it is a way of life some of my students found familiar.

At the end of the book, the two male students had eyes shining with tears they held back. The women, on the other hand, were quiet and thoughtful but their eyes were dry.

One man affirmed that animals really do communicate with each other, even if we don’t understand them. The student who’d hope for Wilbur to explode said, “At first, I hated it…but it turned out to be a good story.”

The post Caught in Charlotte’s Web appeared first on The Horn Book.

My list of family favorites is skewed toward books or series my wife and I have been able to share and enjoy with our two daughters (ages 9 and 6). We have many other favorites, but unlike the characters in my own books, I’m a notorious rule follower. So here are just five that have had the biggest impact so far.

Patricia Hruby Powell danced throughout the Americas and Europe with her dance company, One Plus One, before becoming a writer of children's books. She is the author of Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker, an extraordinary portrait of the passionate performer and civil rights advocate Josephine Baker written in exuberant verse. She lives in Champaign, Illinois. You can visit her online at talesforallages.com.

Reading level: Ages 8 and up

Add this book to your collection: Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

Video courtesy of HarperKids: Sixty years ago, on October 15, 1952, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web was published. It’s gone on to become one of the most beloved children’s books of all time. To celebrate this milestone, the renowned Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo has written a heartfelt and poignant tribute to the book that is itself a beautiful translation of White’s own view of the world—of the joy he took in the change of seasons, in farm life, in the miracles of life and death, and, in short, the glory of everything.

We are proud to include Kate DiCamillo’s foreword in the 60th anniversary editions of this cherished classic.

Available 4.24.12 in hardcover, paperback, and paper-over-board.

Share your love for the book athttp://www.facebook.com/CharlottesWebByEBWhite

Book trailer produced by Dog Ear Creative: http://www.dogearcreative.com

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

Five Family Favorites: Leading Bloggers Share their Family Favorite Books, #2

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: May 8, 2012

From left to right: Catherine, Cindy, and Madeleine Hudson.

For our second installment of Five Family Favorites, we asked Cindy Hudson to share her family’s all-time favorite books. Cindy is the author of Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs (Seal Press, 2009) and the creator of the wonderful Mother Daughter Book Club.com. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two daughters.

From the time our girls were born, my husband and I had fun reading to them. We started with titles like Pat the Bunny and Dr. Seuss books before working our way up to novels to read out loud as a family when they got older.

Reading time was always my favorite time of day, as the four of us piled together on the bed, snuggling under blankets in the winter or enjoying the feel of a breeze from the window in summer. Often, our favorite books were ones that made us laugh or painted a vivid picture of another time or a different world. Here are five of our all-time favorites, books we’ve read more than once and wouldn’t hesitate to read again, even though the girls are all grown up now.

Charlotte’s Web

By E. B. White

Until I read the book by E. B. White I thought Charlotte’s Web was just a cute movie for kids. But the rich story in the book about the unlikely friendship that develops between a spider, Charlotte, and a pig, Wilbur, stole my heart. What seems to be a simple story on the surface has so much more beneath it, from the meaning of true friendship, to being resourceful while bringing about change to your world, to suffering grief from loss and learning how to carry on afterward. And as you would expect from a classic that has stood the test of time, adults can appreciate the deeper meanings while both generations enjoy the surface story. (Ages 6-11. Publisher: HarperCollins)

Boy: Tales of Childhood

By Roald Dahl

Ever wonder where Dahl got the ideas for some of the wacky and evil characters that punctuate his fiction? You’ll find out when you read Boy: Tales of Ch