The Spider and the Fly

 

The Spider and the Fly
By: Mary Howitt
Illustrated by: Tony Diterlizzi
Simon and Schuster 2002
Poetry Selection

The Spider and the Fly is actually based of the poem by Mary Howitt who was a prolific writer in the 1800's. The poem was written in 1829 and was soon valued as a cautionary tale. The story begins with a fly coming upon a spider that is begging her to stay at his place of residence and becomes overly nice to her to butter her up in a way. The fly at first constantly rejects his requests and tries to leave. She knows of the spiders ways and how he eats many bugs so she is very weary of him and eventually leaves. The spider allows her to leave because he knows for sure she will be back. The fly comes back and is stuck in hat by the spider and put in a web. She is soon to be eaten just because she did not trust her instincts and believed anthers manipulations. 

This picture book really intrigued when I heard first saw it because it definitely did not look like your normal picture book. I was right it definitely was not but it was very interesting and was right up my alley.  What I appreciated the most about this picture book was that it has been around for so long and has been carried on for this long. It was really cool to see a poem from the 1800's illustrated in the 2000's in a way that the poet would have probably never imagined. The poem it self was kind of fun to read there was only a slight rhyme to it, but still preety cool. I feel like this is an important poem for older students to learn about not being so gullible and if you think something is bad it probably is and you should stay far away from it. Trouble will only come if you go back to what you know is wrong so don't be naive. Its a great lesson for so many people since people can be so blind and they should really learn to see what is right in front of them. The illustrations were wonderful in this book because if you looked close enough you always saw little clues that the spider wanted to eat her like his book about cooking bugs. I think this would be a fun book to read with a class once without really pointing out things and asking the students what they think will happen. Then read it again and point out all the little clues so they can learn to look at illustrations to find out what will happen in the story. This was a really fun book and I would love to have this in my classroom.