Up, Up, and Away - Softcover

Wadsworth, Ginger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580892221 ISBN 13: 9781580892223

Publisher: Charlesbridge, 2009

Synopsis

One spider's search for a home of her own

Each spring hundreds of spiders hatch from their egg sacs and begin their struggle to survive. They must protect themselves not only from predators, but also from their very own siblings!

Ginger Wadsworth and Patricia J. Wynne chronicle the real-life drama of one spider as she eats, grows, spins a dragline of silk, and soars up, up, and away to find a home of her own.

About this title

About the Author:

Ginger Wadsworth is the author of more than twenty books, including River Discoveries, and Words West: Voices of Young Pioneers. Ginger lives in Orinda, California.

Review:

August 1, 2009 In the fall, a garden spider lays her many eggs and encases them in a sac of silk. In the spring, the young spiders emerge. The narrative follows a particular spiderling as she searches for food, avoids predators, and spins a silk thread that catches an air current, carrying her to a new locale, where she spins a web, eats her prey, creates her own egg sac, and dies. In the spring, the cycle begins again. Simply told with wellchosen words and phrases, the story reads aloud well. An appended page provides further information about the type of spider portrayed. Wynne uses watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil to add hue and shading to the precise ink drawings that define the spiders and their surrounding. The illustrations vary in tone from pastoral landscapes that set the scene to close-ups of dramatic escapes from predators that look monstrously large from the spider s point of view. A well-crafted nonfiction picture book. --Booklist

July 1, 2009 A mother spider lays her eggs and wraps them 'round and round with her strong silk thread.' Detailed illustrations and bold language make this tale of birth and death, autumn and spring, fresh, exciting, sensational as life. A great update for elementary school libraries and classrooms. --ForeWord Magazine

June 1, 2009 'When the warm winds blow' in spring, a host of tiny garden spiderlings clamber out of the silken sac that protected them over the winter, and one eluding hungry predators that include her own brothers and sisters spins a long strand that carries her away on the breeze. After a long season in her new home she spins her own egg sac, fills it and then dies 'as mother spiders do every year.' Wadsworth retraces this life cycle in simple, non-anthropomorphic language, and Wynne's pale, naturalistic illustrations are just as restrained and matter-of-fact. Her delicate watercolor, gouache, ink and colored-pencil images include just enough detail to focus readers' attention on what matters, from Spider's many excapes from predators to her own successful trapping of prey. Along with being good preparatory material for a shared reading of Charlotte's Web (obviously intentional, as this book is dedicated to E.B. White), this may draw budding naturalists looking for a less melodramatic alternative to Sandra Markle's Sneaky, Spinning Baby Spiders --Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Charlesbridge
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1580892221
• ISBN 13: 9781580892223
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32