It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Be Nice to Spiders

For this week’s “It’s Monday!” assignment, I read the book “Be Nice to Spiders by Margaret Bloy Graham.

Disclaimer: I am a bug and spider lover!!

This book was my mother’s book when she was a child.   It is a sweet book that reminds me of how easy it is to convince people of pretty much anything.  The book is about a spider named Helen that makes the whole zoo happy because she eats all of the flies.  But naturally, the zoo keeper sees her as a “messy bug”.  Little did he know how much she was doing for his zoo.  At the end of the book, the zoo keeper realizes that the spider was doing him good and he quit destroying her webs and let her live freely.

This book takes me back to my childhood.  If you tell a child that a spider is beautiful and that they are good for our world, chances are they will not think lowly of spiders!! Yes, there are children that are afraid of spiders and will never change their minds.  But this is like so many different situations in our world.  What people don’t realize is that children are honest, they are kind and if they are taught to remain like that, then they will be kind and honest.  If you teach a child that this person is a bad person, or teach them that spiders are “gross” they are going to think it!!

This book teaches children that not everything is what it seem.  The scariest creatures are often the most helpful.  So be kind hearted and have an open mind.

The illustrations for this book are simple but I enjoyed them.  They are fitting for the era that it was written.

To be honest, I am not sure if many children today would enjoy this book as it is an older book.  It is an easy read and it is not long at all, so it could easily be read in one sitting.  I found it enjoyable and I know it would have been a book I enjoyed when I was a kid!