#343 of 1001 · July 9, 2021

There’s often an inexorable quality to a scary story. Though we wish we could warn the main character of the danger, into the danger they must go, for otherwise there would be no story at all. And so it is in @diterlizzi’s adaption of Mary Howitt’s classic poem The Spider and the Fly. The art, executed in gouache, colored pencil, and graphite combined with digital techniques, presents a black and white world of refined Victorian interiors lit with soft chiaroscuro. The monochromatic color scheme and the presentation of several lines as white intertitles on cobwebbed black backgrounds evoke the visual conventions of silent film. DiTerlizzi extends the period setting into the design and costumes of the characters: the Fly is unmistakably a flapper girl with her loose, straight-cut, sleeveless dress, her opera gloves, and her bobbed hair tucked under a cloche hat, while the Spider is an unctuous cad, transitioning from a fez and smoking jacket indoors to a stovepipe hat and ulster outside. Moreover, the Victorian mansion that serves as the spider’s home harks back to Edward Hopper’s famous painting House by the Railroad—which served as the inspiration for the house in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. #spider #fly #danger #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #beautifulbookcover #beautifulbookcovers #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #classicchildrensbooks #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks