“Some Pig” declared Charlotte the spider in E.B. White’s classic children’s book, Charlotte’s Web. Melissa Sweet, a Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator, borrows that line to title her new biography of the beloved author, Some Writer!: The Story of E. B. White (HMH Books for Young Readers).

The title is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, jumping from #1,275 to #160, the result of coverage on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Sweet, a collage artist, created the booking letters, manuscript drafts, photos, illustrations, and more, offering readers, young and old, layered, detailed, and colorful images to investigate.

All Things Considered calls it “delightful” and outlines how White came up with his two most famous story ideas, “Stuart Little came to him in a dream,” says Sweet, “one he had on a train. He woke up and wrote it all down … The beginning of Charlotte’s Web was because he had a sick pig that died and E.B. White wanted redemption. He wanted to find a way to save the pig’s life.”

The book, which Sweet calls a “176-page picture book biography” earned starred reviews from Booklist, Horn Book, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal.

The NPR page features some of the wonderful illustrations, more can be seen in the book video below and in this feature by PW.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2016 at 12:52 pm and is filed under 2016 - Fall, Biography, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.