Blog Post 3 - Fantasy - Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Two children pretending that creative cardboard is an airplane. 

    Fantasy books create a world in which children can escape from everyday life into a world like no other.  There are so many great children’s books out there and incorporate the fantasy genre. Some of my favorites include Peter Pan, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland and one of my most favorite novels as a young reader was Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. 

    Charlotte’s Web created a fantasy world that took place on a farm and focused on a pig named Wilbur and his best friend Charlotte who was a spider. Wilbur and the animals found out that because Wilbur was the runt of the litter of pigs he was going to be killed. The animals did not want this to happen so Charlotte came up with a plan to write messages on her web about Wilbur. People started to come from all over to visit the famous pig. The story is a fantasy story because animals obviously cannot talk, and spiders cannot write messages in their webs to save a pig. Wilbur and Charlotte become best friends. 

     The illustrations seemed to mostly use the element of lines and were all in black and white. Even though the illustrations were not colorful they still drew the reader in and allowed the reader to escape into Wilbur and Charlotte’s world on the farm. 

    One motivational activity that I would do with my students using this book is to allow them to create a message of their own that they would put into the web if they were Charlotte. Then why would they write about why they chose to write that message and how it would help Wilbur to stay alive.