The Spider Lady

Nan Songer and Her Arachnid WWII Army

A TRUE TALE WITH

A CHERRY ON TOP

Calkins Creek

(Astra Books for Young Readers)

pub. 5.10.2025

48 pages

Ages 4 - 8

Author: Penny Parker Klostermann

   Illustrator: Anne Lambelet

Character: Nan Songer

Overview:

"'Venomous spiders, delicate silk, and science experiments filled Nan Songer’s days and nights—her home in California overflowed with many-legged critters.

With inspiration from a friend, Nan began to study how spider silk could be harvested. The finely woven material spiders used to create webs was much stronger than it looked, and Nan was eager to unlock its potential and hopefully help her country at the same time.

At the height of WWII, she studied different spiders before landing on the poisonous black widow as the perfect spider to experiment with. Their strong silk could be used for crosshairs on rifles, which Nan used to fill massive orders for the US military. Despite the danger posed by black widows, Nan wasn’t deterred—she wanted to play her part. Using a device she built for extracting silk, Nan humanely used it on the deadly spiders to get both extra fine and super heavy silk.

Tantalizing taste:

"Spiders filled one whole room!

Species that might eat their roommates lived in jars.

Others lived in cabinets with screen doors.

Some wove their webs in windows.

Nan put branches in the spiders' homes, so they' d have a place to spin.

When thousands of spiders took over her home, feeding them wasn't easy.

She captured bugs and moths at night, raised crickets and fruit flies in jars, kept grubworms in crocks filled with sawdust, attracted gnats with sweet bait and flies with garbage. She even sprayed mist in their homes to take the place of the dewdrops they drank outdoors."

And something more: Penny Parker Klostermann in the Author's Note explains: "The fact that black widow spiders were one of the species Nan worked with certainly got my attention. In her papers she admitted that, initially, she feared them...But after working with them, she found they were the least aggressive species in her spidery and felt they feared her more than she feared them... [When] Nan's supply ran low... people mailed them to Nan, which was against postal regulations but since spiders were needed to help with the war effort, she was issued a special permit so she could receive the spiders."