preview

The Real Miracle Of Charlotte's Web Summary

Decent Essays

Article Review
The article ´´The Real Miracle of Charlotte´s Web´´ by Norton D. Kinghorn that appeared in the Children´s Literature Association Quarterly in 1986 profoundly analyzes the content and main characters of Charlotte´s Web. Kinghorn follows a critical analysis through questions like what is the story about and who is the book about to compare and contrast a variety of literature criticism. The critics portray different mindsets and insights creating an important analysis that Kinghorn puts together to review one piece of children´s literature worth of study.
On the first question what is the story about Kinghorn gathers a wide contrast of ideas from different critics. Roger Sale explains the book is a ´´hymn to the barn´´ (Kinghorn 4), John Rowe Townsend suggests ´´the animals in the barn are really people´´(Kinghorn 4), and the majority agrees with Eudora Welty on the book being about ´´friendship´´ (Kinghorn 4). The majority rules would be a good statement on this question, friendship represents an important theme that develops throughout the passages. Nevertheless, an insight to other themes in the story, as done by the critics, always provides a good review of important details from the novel. …show more content…

A good example is the contrast between John Rowe Townsend and Rebecca Lukens. Townsend suggests the book is about Fern, he explains how the passages show early stages of childhood that progresses into different interests just as humans do in real life (Kinghorn 4). Lukens differs and states that Fern´s character did not grow in the story and therefore could not represent a protagonist (Kinghorn 4). On the contrary, Rebecca Lukens points out Wilbur as a character that changes, therefore Lukens names the pig as the protagonist of the book (Kinghorn

Get Access