Shelly's Book Blog

Strawberry Girl, by Lois Lenski, has been on my bookshelf for years, but I had never read it. Since it won the Newbery Medal in 1946, I decided to give it a try. I found the story mildly interesting. Birdie Boyer, the main character, lives in a small back-woods type of community in Florida in the early 20th century. Her family is new to the area. Much of the plot involves conflict between the Boyer family and their neighbors, the Slaters, who have lived there a long time. The Slaters own cattle and allow them to roam free; the Boyers are farmers and need to protect their crops. The Slaters do not feed their cows, relying instead on the cows' ability to find their own food. Predictably, the cows end up taking a fancy to the Boyers' crops, and Mr. Boyer fences in his property, cutting off the cows' access to their main water source.

In the book's foreword, Lensky explains that Strawberry Girl is part of a series of books she has written about little-known regions of the U.S., and that she has written the characters' conversation in their dialect. Readers see, for example:

"Did your Pa git paid for the steer?" asked Birdie.
"Not yet. He done tole Ma and Gus and Joe and me what he's gonna git for it and he tole us what we might could buy." (p. 59)

I didn't find the dialect difficult or distracting, and I agree with Lenski that it helped me to better understand the world these characters inhabit. Still, I think some people might see it as condescending, just as people object to dialect in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I think both Lenski and Twain saw their use of dialect as descriptive, though, rather than judgmental.

Lenski writes that her purpose was to promote understanding and acceptance of these local habits and differences. She also says that she used real stories from the region but had to soften them so they would still be appropriate for a young audience. The conflicts that arose between the Boyers' and Slaters' real-life counterparts may very well have resulted in much violence and heartache. Strawberry Girl succeeds in presenting the stress and anxiety the conflict causes both adults and children, as well as the unfortunate, even tragic, consequences of trying to settle the argument with violence. I think this is the novel's greatest strength.

Despite the unrealistic ending, where Mr. Slater reforms from a drunken, angry trouble-maker into a good Christian man, I liked the story overall. I probably will not recommend this book to young readers often, but I appreciate the historical perspective in the book, as well as the positve example of the creative problem-solving abilities of Mrs. Boyer and Mrs. Slater.