Childrens Book Review

"Blueberries for Sal"

Childrens book review of Robert McCloskey's "Blueberries for Sal", by Helena, mother of 5 and NOW grandmother of 4!

An absolutely delightful book. My 2-(almost 3-)-year-old granddaughter loves this story and my experience tells me it would enthrall most children from that age all the way up to 7- and 8-year-olds. In fact I enjoy this book a lot and didn’t at all mind re-reading it to little Anna several times the day I found a copy in a used book pile and brought it to her house as a surprise gift.

Little Sal and her mother head out on a blueberry picking expedition to Blueberry Hill. Little Sal’s feet get tired and she sits down in a big clump of bushes to pick and eat blueberries while Mother is busy filling the large tin pail. Meanwhile a mother bear and her cub are also on the hill, eating their fill of blueberries before winter. The little cub gets tired of hurrying after his mother, so he sits down in a big clump of bushes to munch as many blueberries as he can. By the time the girl child and the bear child have eaten the blueberries within reach, their mothers are out of sight! After some searching, each find a mother but, as children’s author Robert McCloskey says in the story: “Little Bear and Little Sal’s mother and Little Sal and Little Bear’s mother were all mixed up with each other among the blueberries on Blueberry Hill.”

The pencil drawings illustrating the story are delightful. Little Sal is as cute a toddler as anyone is likely to meet. Because the story was written in the 1940s, the car shown at the bottom of the hill as Little Sal and her mother set out of their blueberry picking expedition is now an antique model but this is not likely a detail to bother little children. The final picture showing Little Sal and her mother in the kitchen canning blueberries for winter will give parents and educators a good opportunity to explain to children in the older age range that food does not actually come from the store and our grandparents and great-grandparents had a lot of work to do to make sure there was enough food for their families each winter.

Although I found Blueberries for Sal in the book shelf at a thrift store, I have since been able to find that it is still available new, at places like Amazon. I am not surprised the book won a Caldecott Honor Award. Definitely a both thumbs-up book!

(c) Helena Long, May, 2010, Childrens Book Review of " " Robert McCloskey, originally published by Viking Press, 1948, published in Picture Puffins, 1976, Copyright 1948 Robert McCloskey, renewed 1976, Robert McCloskey

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