Aranea A story about a spider by Jenny Wagner illustrated by Ron Brooks

I have been collecting and reading past CBCA treasures - books that were short listed or won prizes since these awards began either in the Picture Book of the Year category or Early Childhood Picture Book of the Year.

Yesterday I talked about a brand new book Leaf Stone Beetle. I just sat down to talk about Aranea and realised this is a perfect companion book so I will go back and add this title to my previous post.

Let's begin with the title - Aranea. This is the name given to the genus of orb-weaving spiders or more correctly this group are called araneus.  It is also the name of the famous spider in Charlotte's Web (1952). Aranea by Jenny Wagner was short listed by the CBCA in 1976 so this is just an interesting side fact not a link.

Aranea is a wonderful demonstration of how text and illustrations should work in a picture book. I like to imagine Ron Brooks sitting down with Jenny Wagner's words and thinking about what to do. He started this book straight after finishing The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek. In his own book Drawn from the Heart Ron Says:

"it is a beautiful clear story about a spider weaving its web, living its life, night to day, day to night, putting up with difficulties, setbacks, doing it all again but it was also ... a classic allegory ... about the qualities of character, especially the courage and perseverance on might bring to the life lived."

One aspect of Aranea that the publisher debated with Ron was his choice of black and white. This was the choice also for Leaf Stone Beetle. Ron wanted this because of the "apparent colourlessness and fineness of spiderwebs themselves." He also wanted to text to work its magic and not have the illustrations be a distraction.

For me the magic of this text comes from giving the full focus to Aranea and her work and not once talking about the purpose of the web to catch prey. I also love the quietness of the story and the amazing work ethic and perseverance of little Aranea as she copes with mindless destruction by two boys and the ravages of a massive storm. "Then all at once the sky cracked open. It split from top to bottom, like a rotten orange thrown against at wall."

One thing I discovered about Aranea is the length. A standard picture book is 32 pages but Ron didn't make a dummy prior to working on his illustrations.  He decided to work with the rhythms and natural breaks in the text which meant Aranea ended up with 36 pages. I am so glad the publisher allowed him to keep it this way and not reduce the format back to 32. In terms of visual literacy, as with other books illustrated by Ron Brooks, you should to notice his use of white space, framing, images contained in circles, the way the web construction is sequenced, his use of whole pages to echo the shock we feel when the boys destroy her web and finally the page with no illustration just white text on a black background. If you have this book in your school library go back and look again.

Aranea is a circle story or the more official term is it uses 'bookending' or that the story is 'bookended'. 

Here is part of the early text:
"First the cross piece
then the frame
then round and round the long spiral
until it was perfect."

This is repeated on the final page where we see at last the completed web with Aranea herself sitting triumphant right in the centre.

I adore Aranea but once again the Kirkus reviewer in 1979 doesn't seem to understand anything about this book. It would be good to use this review as a discussion point with a class of older students perhaps in an art or design class.  One more thing you might like to share with your students. When Ron illustrated Aranea he drew an illustration to be used on the end papers. The publisher did not make use of this but it inspired Jenny Wagner to write her famous book John Brown, Rose and the Midnight cat.