Aranea tells the story of an orb weaving spider who seeks to construct the perfect web. From her home in the "lilac bush in somebody’s garden", she works persistently and secretly at her weaving. Sometimes she herself destroys what she has created before anyone wakes up to see it; other times her webs are broken by stick-wielding schoolboys or housewives hanging out their washing. But while the people register her weaving, Aranea herself remains hidden from sight. 

Late in the summer a huge storm destroys her web and Aranea retreats inside the house. But the stark white walls of the living room offer no protection and when the storm abates she returns to the garden. Back in the lilac bush, she begins to build yet another web:

"First the cross piece

Then the frame

Then round and round the long spiral.

Until it was perfect."

Though the story does not reference classical myth directly, its central character, the female spider Aranea (whose name signifies the genus of orb weaving spiders), recalls the myth of Arachne. Shy, modest, and industrious, Aranea embodies Arachne’s interminable existence after Athena transforms her into a spider. In Ovid’s famous retelling of the scene, Athena curses her to spin for eternity:

"Your fate shall be to dangle on a cord,
and your posterity forever shall
take your example, that your punishment
may last forever!"

Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.135–137 (translated by Brookes More)

There is also potential homage to the story of another spider with special talents, Charlotte, from E. B. White’s children’s classic Charlotte’s Web, first published in 1952. Aranea may not weave words into her webs, but both books emphasise life’s seasonal rhythms and urge their young readers to notice the little details in the world around them.

In his autobiography, Ron Brooks describes Aranea as "a beautifully clear story about a spider weaving its web, living its life, night to day, day to night, putting up with difficulties, setbacks, doing it all again…"*. He also highlights the story as an allegory about "the courage and perseverance once might bring to the life lived."** At the time of the book’s publication, a spider is an unlikely central character for a children’s picture book. Unlike Charlotte, in E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Aranea is not anthropomorphised. She does not speak or interact with other creatures, and the reader is given only limited insight into her subjectivity. She simply weaves her webs. 

Brooks’ illustrations challenge the picture book tradition which assumes children like bright colours and bold shapes. As in Bunyip and John Brown, he uses the technique of very fine cross hatching, in pen and ink, but unlike those contemporary books, Aranea is rendered in a monochrome palette of black on white (with the exception of the description of the storm, in which the words are printed in white on a black background). Brooks writes: "I wanted my pictures to be as much like spider-webs as I could make them – very fine and light, with no colour at all."*** The circular form of the web is emphasised throughout the book, with many of Brooks’ illustrations given a round frame, surrounded by white space and with the sparse written text appearing at the bottom of each page. In contrast, the illustrations featuring human figures and the dramatic storm fill the whole page, with only a tiny black page border to frame them. The presence of terraced mews, private school boys, and a pillar box imply a setting more English than Australian, but the focus of the work is less upon the cultural context than upon the life of the tiny spider, who is almost impossible to find in these images. 

Arachne’s crime is her hubris in her skills as a weaver. Aranea does not gloat, but she too seeks perfection in her designs. Wagner presents her weaving method in a rhythmic, repeated ekphrastic refrain that elevates the spider-web to a thing of beauty, and Brooks’ accompanying illustrations distinguish each step of the process, charting the change from a single thread to a complete circular web. This understated and unorthodox picture book balances the minute world of a minibeast with the powerful forces of nature (including both the elements and human nature), and the grand task of creating something beautiful.

* Ron Brooks, Drawn from the Heart: A Memoir, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010, 83.

** Ibidem.

*** Ibidem, 85.

Brooks, Ron, Drawn from the Heart: A Memoir, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010.