"Charlotte's Web" / Author: [US] EB White / [US] Erwin Brooks White Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House

A story about a spider and a pig, written for children and adults.

In the Zuckerman family's barn, a group of animals lived happily. Among them, the piglet Wilbur and the spider Charlotte established the most sincere friendship. However, the most ugly news broke the peace of the barn: Wilbur's future fate was to become bacon ham. As a pig, the grief-stricken Wilbur seemed to have no choice but to accept the fate of being slaughtered. However, the seemingly insignificant Charlotte said, "I will save you." So Charlotte used her silk to weave words on the pigsty that were regarded as miracles by humans, completely reversing Wilbur's fate, and finally let him win a special prize in the fair competition and a future of peace and contentment. But at this time, the spider Charlotte's life came to an end...

E.B. White (1899-1985) was born in Mont Vernon, New York, and graduated from Cornell University. For many years he was a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. White was an accomplished essayist, humorist, poet, and satirist. For generations of American children, he was famous for writing the first-rate children's books, Stuart the Younger (1945) and Charlotte's Web (1952). Generations of students and writers are familiar with him as the co-author (and editor) of The Elements of Style, a valuable tract on composition and idioms originally written by Professor William Strunk, Jr., who taught White English at Cornell University. The essay "Freedom" was first published in Harper's magazine in July 1940. At that time, the United States had not yet joined the war against the Nazis, the world was in the midst of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and both the left and the right ignored the threat of totalitarianism to democracy. This essay was included in White's collection of essays, One Man's Meat (1942).