I’m Trying to Love Spiders

Submitted by Mr. Eric!

Spiders have never really bothered me. I’ve always thought of them as our tiny, little, fly-eating friends, but my wife doesn’t exactly see them as our pals. She simply can’t stand them.  Every time she sees one creeping across our floor she puts me on “smashing duty” and I am tasked with smashing our little eight legged friends into tiny squishy bits. Exactly where am I going with this meandering thought? Well, I’m Trying to Love Spiders by Bethany Barton, made me instantly think of my wife. Every time I am tasked with smooshing a spider I tell her “but Amanda, without spiders there would be flies swarming all over the place, all over our heads, all of the time! Forever!” Does it work? No way. I’m Trying to Love Spiders is a fun story about how the author of the book tries to talk herself into not hating spiders. She describes some of the cool things that many of them can do, from cartwheeling to building trap doors, but it never really works. One of my favorite parts of the book is when the author exclaims “did you know that spiders produce web from proteins made from their own bodies? That would be like if we built our homes out of our own hair… and then used that hair house to catch our food!” This, of course, is accompanied by an adorable picture of a hair house with slices of pizza stuck in it. Anyone who has ever been afraid of spiders can relate to I’m Trying to Love Spiders. Along the way many spiders are smooshed, but we end up learning some cool things along the way. See this book listed in our catalog