Friday, July 10, 2015

Webster's Email by Hannah Whaley

This is a thoroughly delightful piece of silliness which has a serious message underneath - and aren't they the best kind? The author's illustrations show Webster, the spider whose adventures and mishaps (evidently!) are dutifully detailed for us. This one, curiously enough for a spider, takes place on the world wide web!

Webster has a kid sister who's bizarre expressions is captured by Webster with a camera, and it's just too good to be kept to himself, so he emails his father and includes the pic. From that point on, it gets out of hand. None of this is Webster's fault (he only shared it with family, after all), but he feels bad about it as the image starts circulating all over the place.

And isn't it the easiest thing in the world to do that these days? When you had to take your film to the store and get it printed up, and then had to take the negative back to get copies made if you wanted them, no one ever thought of sending out a letter to a score of people enclosing a picture! Now it's the norm. So educational and a worthy read.