This was a very fun, super fast read! Super fast because it's a YA 120 page book and FUN because it's Gregory Maguire at his finest! It's funny, interesting,funny..wait..I said that. The reader gets the viewpoint of the girls (the Tattletales), boys (the Copycats), their wonderful teacher Miss Earth, nurses, the truck driver, a TV reporter named Meg Snoople, and (best of all) the seven Siberian Snow Spiders found frozen in ice in the Arctic. They escape when the truck they are in crashes. The ice thaws and they make their way to the forest in Vermont where they see the seven girls in the Tattletales and instantly fall in love, one spider per girl.
The problem is that as the spiders get bigger, they get a little cranky and the love turns into revenge as the spider siblings meet their demise, one at a time in various inadvertant silly ways.
This is a fantasy-mystery with outrageously fab elements to exaggerate a tale of spider intrigue.
Four funky arachnid beans...