The Eensy Weensy Spider Freaks Out

The Eensy Weensy Spider Freaks Out is a picture book for 5 year olds that picks up the nursery rhyme at the exact moment it usually stops.

What happens

You know the bit. Up the waterspout, down came the rain, out came the sun. Everyone sings it and nobody ever asks how the spider felt about being washed out of a drainpipe.

Turns out she was not fine about it AT ALL.

"If I had a neck, I could have broken it!" she says. The next day her story is all over the Web (that joke is going to land about two seconds after your reader gets it, and then they will want to tell you). Eensy hides in her garden apartment and announces she is sticking to the ground from now on.

Then her friend Polly the ladybug turns up and takes her to a small potted plant.

This is the bit I love. Eensy puts one leg on the pot. Then another. Then another. It goes on for eight legs, one line each, and a child reading it out loud gets slower and slower and more and more pleased with themselves. She ends up one inch off the ground and decides the first inch was not that hard after all.

After that it is a fireplug, then a dog, then a mailbox, then a fence, then a house, and by the time she notices, she has climbed a waterspout without even thinking about it.

It is a proper story with a beginning and an end, and it is short enough for bedtime with room to talk about it afterwards. The sentences are short and there are not many of them on a page, so it also works for a reader having a first go at a whole story on their own.

Speaking of which, it is American. Fireplug is a fire hydrant, a garden apartment is a basement flat, and none of that will bother a 5 year old for a second. You might just need to say what a fireplug is.

Nothing here is upsetting. Eensy is embarrassed and a bit sulky, which is exactly the point, and Polly is patient with her without ever telling her off.

If you have a child who has gone off something after one bad go at it, a bike, a slide, the deep end, this one makes starting very small look like the obvious plan rather than a defeat.

What to read next

Plop is a baby barn owl who has decided he would rather be a day bird, so his mother sends him down the tree to go and find out what the dark is actually like. That book is The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark and it is in the library too.