Sophies Masterpiece http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Sophies-Masterpiece-Eileen-Spinelli/9780689866807

A Spider's Tale

By Eileen Spinelli

Reviews

K-Gr 3-This quiet film is an iconographic version of Eileen Spinelli's book (S & S, 2001). Sophie is "no ordinary house spider"; she is part human/part arachnid and 100 per cent artist. The tow-haired heroine spins wondrous webs wherever she goes. At the start of the story, she arrives at Beekman's boarding house with her worldly belongings, ready to begin her adult life. Noting her dull surroundings, she proceeds to spin some lustrous curtains, only to be swatted with a dust rag. She retreats upstairs to the captain's room where she commences to spin him a sky-blue sweater, only to be greeted with another screech and his hasty retreat onto the roof. The cook is equally repulsed when she discovers Sophie in her slippers. Despite her good intentions, the poor creature is repeatedly scorned until she finally settles in a kind young woman's knitting basket. The observant spider deduces from the booties and baby sweater that the woman is pregnant and in need of a baby blanket. By now the spinner is frail and gray but determined to finish this final offering. Weaving in sun, moonlight, lullabies, snowflakes, and her own heart, she places the soft, silky cover-her masterpiece-on the new baby. Jane Dyer's delicate watercolors capture the fragile beauty of Sophie's gossamer creations. The boarders' unwarranted fear is depicted as both humorous and cruel. Children will gain a new respect for these magical creatures and want to learn more about their life cycle after viewing this gentle story.-Barbara Auerbach, New York City Public Schools Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

The team behind When Mama Comes Home Tonight here introduces readers to a spider who weaves with grace and serves others with courage. Dyer's gently tinted watercolors show Sophie as a blond with a human face and a perpetually tranquil expression (often sporting a beret); her eight-limbed body, with its two arms and six colorfully-stockinged legs, seems perfectly believable. Over time, the tender-hearted arachnid weaves garments she thinks the human boarders in the boardinghouse she inhabits will find useful, but she's always chased away before she can complete them. Tiring of her nomadic life, she discovers at last a quiet mother-to-be who is not afraid of spiders and who hasn't enough money for a baby blanket. Sophie, now nearing the end of her life, then starts on her last project: "She was down to the farthest corner of the blanket when she heard the cry of the young woman's newborn baby. And there, on that farthest corner, is where Sophie wove into the blanket her very own heart." Dyer paints Sophie in various spidery attitudes; in one painting, she dozes in a knitting basket, dwarfed by huge balls of yarn. Later, at work on her pi?ce de r?sistance, she crouches, silver-haired, beside a snowy windowpane. Spinelli and Dyer's story of devotion and generosity is as delicately woven as Sophie's own work. Ages 4-7. (May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.