It doesn't surprise me that Charlotte's Web is almost 60 years old. A children's book that deals with the dark side of farming wouldn't get past most editors now-a-days. We live in an urban world now - there are a dozen degrees of separation between fluffy farm animals and prepackaged meat.
And yet this story of a runt who is rescued from slaughter by a bloodthirsty spider who weaves 'some pig' in her web to save him - then dies after hatching her egg sac -is a literary classic. It has sold 45 million copies and been translated into 23 languages.
How reassuring to realise that innocent children can unquestioningly accept the life cycle of birth, reproduction and death - it's adults who have problems with it
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