Not long ago my girlfriend and I began reading to each other late at night from E.B. White's children's classic, "Charlotte's Web." It was a book we remembered fondly from our childhoods, and by reading it aloud we may have hoped to recoup some of the lost comforts of that time: the comfort of having someone you loved sit beside you in the vulnerable half-hour before sleep; the comfort of being lowered into the night on a silken line of narrative. And because we were reading as well as being read to (we took turns on alternating nights), we were also experiencing a pleasure associated with parenthood, experiencing it in a tidied-up way, since neither of us was likely to interrupt the reading to ask what a certain word meant, or why someone would want to kill a little pig, or for a drink of water.

I was the first reader, and I remember thinking, as I launched into prose, that here was a perfect children's book: simple, concrete words; short sentences as finely balanced as vintage hand tools, dialogue that sets character as well as situation and compels even the most droning reader to put some feeling in his recitation. The story announced itself with a forthrightness that is almost taboo in contemporary adult fiction, though it was more common in the last century. A little pig, the runt of his litter, is saved from slaughter by a girl named Fern, who then raises it as a baby. She names it Wilbur. When Wilbur gets too big to keep around the house, he is sent to live in a barn belonging to Fern's uncle, Homer Zuckerman.

At first he is lonely. Then one day Wilbur makes a friend. She is Charlotte A. Cavitica, a common gray barn spider. Charlotte is shrewd, loyal and possessed of an unusual literary facility. This last quality proves instrumental in saving Wilbur's life. When Charlotte learns that Zuckerman plans to butcher the pig come Christmastime, she embarks on an elaborate PR campaign, spinning Wilbur's praises -- "SOME PIG," "TERRIFIC," "RADIANT" -- into her web. (Fittingly, she copies the words from magazine ads.) Everyone takes this for a miracle, although one or two people are sufficiently perspicacious to note that the miracle consists of a spider's being able to write. After a triumphant appearance at the County Fair, where he is awarded a special medal, Wilbur's safety is assured. Charlotte dies, but Wilbur rescues her egg sac so that her children and grandchildren will live on in the barn.

My initial impression of "Charlotte's Web" was of how nice it was. I don't mean this pejoratively. Niceness connotes blandness and ineffectuality (calling someone "a nice guy" isn't much of a compliment these days), but it can also mean sweetness, decency, a sense of rightness, things we want to impart to our children. At first glance the world of "Charlotte's Web" seems very nice: A small child prevails upon her father's conscience and saves the life of a small, weak animal. A bond arises between them. There is mercy here, and love, in forms that children can understand. Children can be brutal, but they also have a strong sense of justice. What bothers Fern most about the pig's impending slaughter is how unfair it is: "If I had been very small at birth,'" she asks her father, "Would you have killed me?'" I can't remember what I felt reading this passage as a child, but as an adult I smiled ruefully. I smiled because I recognized the logic of Fern's argument. The ruefulness came in because I know how feeble such logic is in the "real," the grown-up, world -- where small animals and small children are killed all the time. So perhaps the niceness I discerned in White's book really is the same thing as ineffectuality or, more accurately, fragility. Perhaps all children's books convey a vision of reality whose poignancy comes from the grown-up's knowledge and the child's suspicion that the vision is based only on wish.

White himself seems to acknowledge this. Imbedded in his description of Zuckerman's barn -- a description whose loving enumeration of horses' sweat and cows' breath, axle grease and harness dressing evokes mood as wonderfully as one of James Schuyler's nature poems -- lies the idea of refuge. The barn's peaceful smell makes one feel "as though nothing bad could ever happen again in the world." But the phrase also contains a recognition that bad things have happened already and will probably happen again. Wilbur is snubbed by the other animals. The same people who feed and care for him turn out to be plotting his death. Even Fern, who used to take Wilbur for rides in her doll's baby carriage and watch him raptly in his pen, gradually grows more interested in boys. Alongside its niceness, "Charlotte's Web" presents the reader with instances of thoughtless cruelty, hypocrisy and betrayal. "Jesus, people are awful!" I burst out when my girlfriend revealed the plans for Wilbur's slaughter. "Yup, they sure are," she said.

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