SOME PIG!

Kneen contributes a set of serene, soft-toned scenes to the complete, unaltered second chapter of Charlotte’s Web, in which Wilbur (who positively radiates with personality in the pictures) gets plenty of TLC from Fern, and is finally sold to the Zuckermans. Expertly riffing on Garth Williams’s delicacy of line and subtle modulations of color, the illustrator captures the intensity of feeling that passes between girl and pig, as well as the sunny rural milieu they inhabit. As an extracted episode it hangs together reasonably well, though the ending is abrupt and without much sense of closure. No substitute for the full story, but a worthy stand-in for fledgling readers not yet up to tackling the original on their own. (Picture book. 6-8)