Of Pigs and Potions

When my son was five, he came home from school one afternoon looking surprisingly glum. I wondered if he’d had a dust‑up with another kid or been chastised by his teacher. Before I could inquire, he looked at me mournfully and said, “Something terrible happened today.” He paused dramatically. “Charlotte died.” I knew immediately that he was grieving for the barnyard spider who befriends Wilbur, the runt of the sow’s litter in E. B. White’s masterpiece, Charlotte’s Web.

Together we had read White’s much more benign Stuart Little, but I was waiting until my son was older before tackling darker themes of difference, death, and bereavement. Nowadays, I suppose, some parents would be storming the school, insisting that Charlotte’s Web is too frightening, too sophisticated, too whatever for such young children, but back then I watched and waited and reached for my tattered copy.

My son and I both shed a few tears that afternoon and...