Title: The Spider’s Journey
Author: Kate Gardner
Publisher: Xlibris
ISBN: 978-1-9845-6455-9
Pages: 24
Genre: Illustrated Children’s Book
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Pacific Book Review
Readers with any degree of arachnophobia beware! The Spider’s Journey by author Kate Gardner will send shivers down your back when paging this illustrated children’s book.
Accidently picked up while picking blackberries from a bush and transported involuntarily into the kitchen of a home, this little bug crawls out of the fruit bucket and onto the counter next to the sink. As the mother, noticing the insect, screams to her husband to kill the arachnid, the man is determined to spare the spider’s life, and return it to the blackberry bush from where it came.
The image of the eight-legged insect is a bit of a scary character, especially to the instincts of children. When the first impulse is to kill the critter, the wisdom of the father with his respect for all life brings forth the concept to children to be kind to nature’s creations. Yes, although overcoming the initial fear is something this book teaches
children, in the long run it may prove a valuable lesson to spare the lives of many other insects such as flies, bees and other crawling creatures.
Not all spiders are dangerous, and people have to be able to handle them in a way as not to arouse their defenses. This book emphasizes the balance in nature; that is, how spiders are useful to rid the garden of other harmful insects. It teaches quite a dramatic lesson in a short picture-filled book.
So move over Charlotte, there’s a new spider in town – and it is going on a journey from the blackberry bush, to a kitchen near you, then back to the garden – all the while as readers are entertained or lulled off to sleep with this impactful story. If this lesson is learned at a younger age in life, the fear of these amazing creatures may become something people may not need to jump to get a rolled-up newspaper to swat, but instead a jar to carry it back to from where it came. Living in peace and harmony with all of nature’s living gifts is the moral of this story, as The Spider’s Journey brings the bug back to the garden to live happily ever after.
