World Famous Comics: Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze
Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze
By: Elizabeth Enright Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 224 Publication Date: September 01, 2002 Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Product Description: Meet the Melendys! Mona, the eldest, is thirteen. She has decided to become an actress and can recite poetry at the drop of a hat. Rush is twelve and a bit mischievous. Miranda is ten and a half. She loves dancing and painting pictures. Oliver is the youngest. At six, he is a calm and thoughful person. They all live with their father, who is a writer, and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, who takes on the many roles of nurse, cook, substitute mother, grandmother, and aunt.Elizabeth Enrights Melendy Quartet, which captures the lively adventures of a family as they move from the city to the country, are being published in new editions. Each of the books features a foreward and signature black-and-white interior illustrations by the author. Popular artist Tricia Tusa provides irresistible new cover art that will appeal to todays readers.
it's lacking 3 melendys! This is the last of the melendy books I read; it it was ok. The mystery is great and puzzling but the disappointing thing is THERE's ONLY OLIVER AND RANDY IN IT!!! How can you have a melendy book less than half the melendys?! Also the prize at the end is sweet but disappointing, but overall... ok.
Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze This was one of our daughter's favorite books when we read it to her as a child. She is now twenty and in college and it resides on a shelf with other best book-friends from her childhood, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit and The Trilogy, The Castle in the Attic,etc.(comfort reads now) This book is full of fun and innocence and safe mystery. It depicts a happy, intelligent family who live a peaceful yet interesting life.
A good ending I very much enjoyed all of Enright's books--both the Melendy series and the Gone-Away books. When I found out that she had three sons, I longed to get them together and ask, "OK, which of you is Rush, which of you is Julian, which of you is Oliver?"
I would echo the reviewer who says that the Melendy books would make a great TV mini-series, excpet that (having seen what TV did to some other classic children's books) I'd be afraid that they'd try to modernize them and mess them up. While the Gone-Away books could, perhaps, survive (they are far less time-bound), the Melendy books are tied very specifically to a particular time/place, and attempts to update would ruin them.
A GREAT FAMILY READ-ALOUD CHOICE One day I saw my daughter curled up with a book. "What are you reading?" I inquired. She flashed the well-loved cover of my childhood copy of Spiderweb for Two. "I was feeling Melendyish today," she explained. "Melendyish" is the perfect word to describe that sensation experienced by die-hard fans of Elizabeth Enright's four Melendy stories when nothing else will do but to curl up with one of her books and visit the beloved Melendy family once again. When I was a child the four Melendy children sometimes seemed more like real, three-dimensional people than some actual living, breathing kids I knew. Spiderweb for Two was the first Melendy book I read and it inspired me to create many mind-boggling clue hunts for my brother and my friends. The treasure hunts that figure prominently in the way my children and I celebrate holidays today can probably be traced back to those Melendyish moments of my childhood when I read this book over and over and over. (I can still recite some of the story's mysterious clues from memory!) I would suggest that you read the Melendy books in order: The Saturdays, The Four Story Mistake, Then There Were Five, Tatsinda (a fairy tale that is mentioned but not told in Then There Were Five) and finally Spiderweb For Two. Just be sure you don't stop before you get to Spiderweb for Two! Your whole family will enjoy it! If you want more funny, creative, warm and cozy family stories like these, try The Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, and New Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit.
The end (alas) of my favorite childhood books "Spiderweb for Two" is the last book in the series about the Melendy family and it's my least favorite of the four, simply because there are not enough Melendys in it. When the book opens, one year after the end of the third book, the three oldest children are off to boarding school and Randy and Oliver are facing a lonely, boring winter by themselves, until a mysterious letter written on blue paper arrives in the mail, containing the first clue to what will be a year-long treasure hunt. The clues are funny and entertaining, and the adventures Randy and Oliver get into, going from one clue to the next, are enjoyable. But we miss the presence of Mona, Rush and Mark except during the brief period they are home from school for the Christmas holidays, and the adults in the family, Father, Cuffy and Willie, aren't quite enough to take up the slack.
One thing about "Spiderweb" that sets it apart from the first three books is the lack of a time frame. Enright wrote the first three during World War II and the war is at the center of the family's lives and is present in each book; the children are busy presenting a show and working after school to buy war bonds and going on scrap metal drives during the summer holiday. The first three books take place from the later winter and early spring of 1942, through the end of the summer of 1943. But although "Spiderweb" runs from October of 1944 to June of 1945, the war is never even referred to in the book. Even V-E Day in May of 1945 which would have been celebrated all over town, isn't mentioned. Perhaps this is because Enright wrote "Spiderweb" ten years after she wrote the third book and many of her readers hadn't been born during the war; but still, some mention of the events would have given the book a dimension that is present in the first three but lacking in this one.
When I turned the last page of "Spiderweb" after reading it as a child, I was devastated to realize that there would be no more Melendy books. But Enright had the right idea; the next year would have seen Randy herself going off to boarding school and leaving Oliver rattling around the Four Story Mistake by his lonesome. A depressing prospect indeed. Enright knew where to end it.
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