Book Review: Spiderweb for Two

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: Spiderweb for Two


Author: Elizabeth Enright

Date: 1951

Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston

ISBN: 0-03-035770-5

Length: 209 pages

Illustrations: drawings by the author

Quote: "I know it's pretty hard on you when you're used to having 'em all here."

A brother and sister share a year-long "treasure" hunt, and at the end the only "treasure" is a family party. The Depression and War years were over by this time; probably Elizabeth Enright was the only writer on Earth who could have sold this plot to children, such that this book would be read and enjoyed and reprinted often enough to have an ISBN. Anyone else would have made it preachy.

Enright, however, was able to weave in enough of her lifelong interests (architecture, art, antiques, the Victorian era and the people who'd lived in it) and more recent ones (nature, farms, edible wild plants) to make this book a consistently delightful read.

Maybe part of the kid appeal in Spiderweb for Two is what's become a very controversial, even taboo, idea. These children receive secret messages through the mail, and they're directed to follow the clues without telling the grown-ups! And although they don't recognize the handwriting in the clues, all this secrecy really unfolds as wholesome family fun. The old friend who encouraged their father to move to their farm in the Adirondacks, and the older siblings who have gone off to prep school, are just helping them keep up with their artistic and academic work and meet some more friendly neighbors! Secrets aren't always horrible! Yikes! Can today's paranoid parents live with such subversive thoughts?

The children are aware that mystery messages might come from an enemy, at least a "school enemy" who might want to embarrass them. They use their own judgment to determine that these messages have to come from someone who knows their family, even if they're not sure which of the family friends it could be. Whew.

This story was written for children, but I think it's instructive for adults to consider the role the children's father plays in their "mystery." When children start to feel the urge to have adventures of therir own, adults who don't want to rear obese, depressed, or "boomerang" children could do worse than take him as an example. He's aware of everything they're doing, all along. He can keep a secret too.

As with the other volumes in the four-book Melendy Family series, these books are likely to be best loved by bright elementary and middle school children, who enjoy reading about other children like them and who positively like learning new words from the context. Enright gives them a few new ones: "shabby, like monstrous molting crows," "lashed to the earth with brambles and bindweed," "I've got laryngitis, and my voice is gone."

This book has been reprinted several times; Amazon shows several hardcover and paperback editions available. None is cheap. If you don't mind a copy with a jacket illustration done by someone other than Enright, that's probably what you'll get.