Then
I was six when my grandmother first read this to me on her screened porch in summer, and I cried so hard at the end that she cried too, which alarmed me because grandmothers weren’t supposed to cry. I couldn’t explain at the time why it hit so hard. I just knew that Charlotte was real, that Wilbur was real, that the barn was somewhere I could go.
I checked it out from the school library four times in second grade. The librarian finally just told me to keep the copy for the rest of the year.
Now
What strikes me now is how economical White’s prose is. Every sentence does exactly what it needs to do. There’s no sentimentality — or rather, the sentimentality is earned, precisely because White refuses to protect you from it. The ending is matter-of-fact in a way that somehow makes it more devastating.
I also didn’t notice, at six, how funny it is. Templeton is genuinely hilarious. The county fair sequence is a perfect little comedy. White trusted his readers — even the small ones — to hold both things at once: the grief and the humor, the beauty and the loss.
Still cry at the end. This will never change.