INTRODUCTION

In October Bob Weinberg and Jill Morgan approached me about collaborating with one of my children on a story for an anthology called Great Writers and Kids Write Spooky Stories. I loved the idea.

My daughter Meggan was twenty-two at the time and already writing on her own. I’d been helping her with a poem that she wanted to adapt to a children’s book. Since the poem (“No Tarantulas, Please”) derived from Meg’s lifelong fear of spiders, we decided to center the tale around that. We discussed—but did not write down—an outline of the story and how it should progress. I came up with a situation that I thought would allow Meg to tap into her fears and infuse them into the story; Meg came up with the diabolical ending. She sat down and banged out the first half of the story in one day. I embellished that and carried it to its close. Then we tweaked and polished it until we both were happy with the final form.

So here’s “Itsy Bitsy Spider” from a dad who thinks spiders are cool, and a daughter who forced herself to see Arachnophobia with me but kept her feet off the floor the whole time. It’s intended for a YA audience, but I think it’s pretty damn creepy no matter what your age.