If you haven't read Charlotte's Web in a while, may I recommend a revisit. Rose and I just finished it at bedtime tonight. It is so lovely, so perfect in its tone. Death is completely devastating and fought against, and death is completely natural and accepted with equanimity. I read it for the friendship. When Wilber is crying in the barn yard because he is so lonely and then Charlotte greets him, I felt so cared for. I read it for the rich background detail. It made me, who has really no desire to live fifty years ago on a farm, yearn for a chance on that rope swing. I grit my teeth through boring moralistic tales like the Bearnstein Bears, I pretend I'm somewhere else with predictable plot twists of the Junie B. Jones chapter books, and then I get a classic like this, and I feel like I'm floating.