Detective Abby: Oh, good! You’re here. I’m Detective Abby of the R. E. A. D. Agency.

And I’ve located some books that  are… more than what they seem. There are deeper meanings and fascinating findings lurking just beneath the surface. And  to uncover them, I’ll need your help.

Welcome, story sleuths, to Crash Course Kids Literature.

[0:18] [THEME MUSIC]

[0:24] Detective Abby: Today, we’ll be combining background knowledge — that’s everything you already know — with evidence, or clues from the story itself. To make what we call, inferences. Because, here’s the thing: authors don’t always tell us everything about the characters, setting, or plot of a story. But they do leave us lots of clues.

Then, we can combine those clues  with stuff we already know to infer, or figure out, what else is going on. Like, say you wake up, and the street outside is all wet. You know that last night your street, the sidewalk, and your soccer ball were dry.

You also know that rain makes everything wet. So you infer that it rained during the night. You make inferences in your regular life all the time.

That’s why the R. E. A. D. Agency needs you to help us make inferences about our book collection. To start, let’s check out the case notes for “Charlotte’s Web” by E. B. White. Here’s what we know about the story.

An 8-year-old girl named Fern finds out that a litter of piglets was born on her family’s farm. She convinces her dad to let her take care of the  smallest piglet, Wilbur, until he grows stronger. When Wilbur gets big enough, he  goes to live on the Zuckerman farm.

There, he becomes friends  with a spider named Charlotte. Then Wilbur learns that the Zuckermans plan to kill him for food. He doesn’t want to die!

So Charlotte comes up with a plan to save Wilbur. She spins webs with words in them, like SOME PIG and TERRIFIC. The Zuckermans are amazed.

They decide to bring Wilbur to the fair so everyone can see their incredible pig. Wilbur wins a special prize at the fair, and he knows that the plan to save him worked. The Zuckermans let Wilbur live happily on their farm for the rest of his life.

Our case notes tell us what happened. But to know exactly how and why it all happened, we’ll need to make some inferences. As story sleuths, we can look for evidence in different parts of the book.

Including what the characters say and do. For example, we can infer more information about Wilbur by considering how he  acts when he meets Charlotte. The first time Wilbur hears Charlotte’s voice, it’s nighttime, and he can’t see her in the dark.

So he has to wait until morning to meet her. And Wilbur has a very hard time sleeping. When it’s finally light, he says, “Oh beautiful day, it is here at last!” He looks all over to find his new friend, asking whoever spoke to him to show themselves—and waking up the whole farm.

These are all pieces of evidence  about Wilbur’s emotions. But to know for sure how he’s feeling, we need to combine that evidence with our own background knowledge. I know that having trouble sleeping and waking up early can mean you’re excited, like sometimes I do on my birthday.

So, I can infer that Wilbur is excited to meet his new friend. Next, we can look for evidence about the story’s deeper meaning by considering  details about the setting. When Wilbur goes to live on the Zuckerman farm, we read that there’s “always hay  in the great loft up overhead.” We learn that the barn is warm in  the winter and cool in the summer.

And Wilbur gets three meals a day with milk, and good food like potato skins and meat gravy. The book doesn’t say exactly how hay gets into the loft or where Wilbur’s food comes from. But we know from our background knowledge  that someone has to do all that work.

So we can infer that the Zuckermans work hard to take good care of their animals. Finally, we can look for evidence about the story in the plot. We read that Wilbur hopes to win a prize at the  fair so that Mr. Zuckerman will let him live. But when they get to the fair, Charlotte sees a much bigger pig in the next pen. She says it’s going to be “a hard pig to beat.” When Wilbur hears this, we read:  “tears began to come to his eyes.” The book doesn’t tell us exactly what that means.

But think about a time when you really  wanted something and didn’t get it. It probably made you feel sad and disappointed. So we can infer that when Charlotte and Wilbur see the other pig, they’re disappointed, too.

They realize that they might not win a prize. Their plan to keep Wilbur alive might not work. But we read the case notes, so we know that it does.

And those are just a few of the inferences we can make while reading “Charlotte’s Web”— there’s so much more to dig into. So, keep on sleuthing! Making inferences is a great way to make reading more fun.

Plus, it helps us understand more in every story we read. And it helps us figure out whether the street is wet because of a huge, space water balloon—or if it just rained last night. So thanks, story sleuths!

I’ll see you all back here soon. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Kids Literature, which was filmed at the Complexly studio in Indianapolis, Indiana and was made with the help of all these terrific people.