Wisecracking Bob, who is a little bit Chihuahua among other things, now lives with his girl, Julia, and her parents. Tiny, sassy Bob the dog, friend of The One and Only Ivan (2012), returns to tell his tale. The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans-are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too. And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring. The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is 'Humble'.

At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. The cast is presumed white by default.Ī successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl. The cliffhanger ending paves the way for the book’s planned sequel. Funaro carefully lays clues to help readers solve the mystery surrounding the house, while the love-conquers-all message keeps the terror at a (mostly) safe distance. Soon, the whole family winds up in a race against time to stop an evil monster known as the Garr from enveloping the house in the forest it controls. At midnight, a few of the animal figurines that live in the clock come to life and choose Lucy as their caretaker. The job temporarily relocates the family to an isolated residence known as the Blackford House to repair its unconventional cuckoo clock.

Things start to look up when an elderly, black-clad Englishman hires the pair’s “clocksmith extraordinaire” father, advancing him $12,000 in gold coins. Lucy picks fights at school, and Oliver is bullied by classmates for being low-income. Still grieving their mother’s death, siblings Lucy, 11, and Oliver, 13, are having a rough go at life. A family becomes the new cogs in the clockwork of an old house’s dark, alchemical history.

Watch Hollow by Gregory Funaro