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Radiant and Terrific: E.B. White Reading Charlotte's Web

Filed under: The Katharine Wheel: On Fiction Tagged: Ann Carroll Moore, books, Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, fiction, Jill Lepore, Matt Dellinger, newyorker.com, NPR, podcasts, Roger Angell

Great story on NPR by Melissa Block a few days back, paying tribute to E.B. White's immortal Charlotte's Web. Follow the links to listen to White himself reading an excerpt. Also, be sure to listen to the New Yorker Out Loud interview with Jill Lepore and Roger Angell about White's Stuart Little. As our intern Adam Shoemaker wrote last month:

On the New Yorker Out Loud podcast, Matt Dellinger speaks with Jill Lepore about her piece on E.B. White's decidedly unmousy classic Stuart Little. Roger Angell, E.B. White's stepson, also joins in the conversation. Lepore talks about her fascination with the piece—and the lengths to which that drove her research. The real story, says the author, is not the battle between E.B. White and the celebrated librarian Ann Carroll Moore, but rather the sometimes noble, sometimes cosseted vision of children's literature the Victorian Moore tried—ultimately, unsuccessfully—to impose on America's young readers.

Related: Emily's beef with the stereotypical voice casting for the live-action movie version of Charlotte's Web.

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Emdashes, founded in 2004 by Emily Gordon, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.

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Some writing by Emily Gordon

Review: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (for Newsday)
Annotated slide show: a wet, festive 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for nycgo.com)
Proposal: A better-looking MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
Review: Does a redesign of The New Republic mean a change of tune? (for Print)
Interview: four online obsessives and visual cataloguers, Kate Bingaman, Nicholas Felton, Ellie Harrison, and John D. Freyer (for Print)
Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
Interviews: winning New Visual Artists Eleanor Grosch, Zigmunds Lapsa, Christian Cervantes, and Kate & Camilla (for Print)
Profile: lindy hop legend Frankie Manning (for Newsday, with Robert Fouch)
Feature: Rea Irvin, illustrator, bon vivant, and The New Yorker's first art director (for Print)
Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
Review: My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World by Julian Dibbell (for Newsday)
Review: Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley (for Newsday)
Review: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (for Print)
Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
Report: The New Yorker's redesigned website (for Print)
Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
Interview: Matthew Diffee on the appropriately inappropriate cartoons of the The Rejection Collection (for Print)
Interview: Roz Chast on Brooklyn, pysanky eggs, and animation (for Newsday)
Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
Interview: Edward Gorey (for Newsday)

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They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.

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