Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper focuses on Mary Howitt and Tony DiTerlizzi’s The Spider and the Fly. Through the creation of this picture book, DiTerlizzi participates in a collaborative counterpontal narrative across time, with Howitt’s poem, but also with other fables, cautionary tales and genres such as silent film.

Paper long abstract

Many picture books are collaborative and subversive projects by nature. Rather than simply supplementing the words on the page, William Moebius suggests that a true picture book contains two “semi-autonomous and mutually attractive chains of meaning” (2011). In other words: while these visual and verbal texts can work together, they often work independently as well.

In this paper, I focus on the picturebook The Spider and the Fly (2003), in which Tony DiTerlizzi reproduces Mary Howitt’s 1828 poem of the same name with new illustrations. By doing so, I argue that DiTerlizzi becomes a participant in a collaborative narrative constructed across time. I suggest that Howitt also frames her poem as a part of a larger narrative. Her poem was initially published with the subtitle “a new Version of an old Story,” inviting readers to place her poem in conversation with other narratives, such as Aesop's fables and other cautionary tales. I argue that DiTerlizzi uses intertextual references and artistic style to pay homage to other adaptations of this story, such as the 1916 silent film of the same title. DiTerlizzi reproduces Howitt’s poem faithfully, but I suggest that through the addition of images, DiTerlizzi fills gaps in the narrative, with visual and verbal texts working in counterpoint. DiTerlizzi uses his visual text to suggest that while the the fly’s words (polite refusals) suggests she understands the danger, they do not match her actions (accepting forward invitations), ultimately leading to her demise.