Blueberries for Sal
Encyclopedia
Blueberries for Sal is a children's picture book
by Robert McCloskey
. It was awarded the Caldecott Honor in 1949.
The story is of a little girl Sal and her mother as they go out into the country to pick blueberries
for winter, and a bear and his mother as they go to eat berries for winter from the other side of the same hill. Set in a small town in Maine this picture book piece that uses a single dark blue color and block printing for the illustrations.
Sal and Sal's mother are modeled after McCloskey's wife, Margaret, and daughter, Sarah.
The book uses a number of visual narrative (illustration) techniques as will as verbal techniques to draw parallels between and at the same time contrast the bear and the human families. Both families are set in similar compositions, but they head in opposite directions when they reach the blueberry patch. Some of the verbal interplay that matches and contrasts the two occurs when Sal’s Mother tells her that they can’t eat all the berries because they need to save them for winter, and the bear mother tells her child to eat as much as it can to store up for winter. Both families are storing food for the winter, but in very different ways, and the bear's is much easier for children to follow. Sal soon wanders off to eat.
It is at this point that Sal and the bear cub get mixed up and follow after the wrong mother. It takes the mothers several minutes to realize they're being followed by the wrong child; it isn't until the bear cub tries to eat from Sal's mother's bucket and the mother bear hears the "ku-plink, ku-plank, ku-plunk" sound of Sal dropping blueberries into her tin pail that they find out what has happened. Needless to say, the two mothers are extremely surprised.
Ultimately each child is reunited with his/her proper mother and they both leave the hill. Just before leaving Sal drops a blueberry into her still empty pail.
Picture book
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor and pencil.Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now...
by Robert McCloskey
Robert McCloskey
Robert McCloskey was an American author and illustrator of children's books. McCloskey wrote and illustrated eight books, two of which won the Caldecott Medal, the American Library Association's annual award of distinction for children's book illustration.Many of McCloskey's books were set on the...
. It was awarded the Caldecott Honor in 1949.
The story is of a little girl Sal and her mother as they go out into the country to pick blueberries
Blueberry
Blueberries are flowering plants of the genus Vaccinium with dark-blue berries and are perennial...
for winter, and a bear and his mother as they go to eat berries for winter from the other side of the same hill. Set in a small town in Maine this picture book piece that uses a single dark blue color and block printing for the illustrations.
Sal and Sal's mother are modeled after McCloskey's wife, Margaret, and daughter, Sarah.
Plot Summary
"The book opens and closes with a picture of little Sal and her mother in the kitchen, the mother is canning blueberries. This very domestic opening is typical of the warmth of McCloskey who loved life, life for living as much as anything else. One sees in this opening picture Sal entertaining herself by placing the canning rings on her wrist and a spoon, a simple childlike act which helps to set the stage for Sal's obvious child actions throughout the books. This is not to be the overly diligent or angelic girl of so many other books, Sal is a real child figure. She gets into mischief and causes her mom no end of trouble.”The book uses a number of visual narrative (illustration) techniques as will as verbal techniques to draw parallels between and at the same time contrast the bear and the human families. Both families are set in similar compositions, but they head in opposite directions when they reach the blueberry patch. Some of the verbal interplay that matches and contrasts the two occurs when Sal’s Mother tells her that they can’t eat all the berries because they need to save them for winter, and the bear mother tells her child to eat as much as it can to store up for winter. Both families are storing food for the winter, but in very different ways, and the bear's is much easier for children to follow. Sal soon wanders off to eat.
It is at this point that Sal and the bear cub get mixed up and follow after the wrong mother. It takes the mothers several minutes to realize they're being followed by the wrong child; it isn't until the bear cub tries to eat from Sal's mother's bucket and the mother bear hears the "ku-plink, ku-plank, ku-plunk" sound of Sal dropping blueberries into her tin pail that they find out what has happened. Needless to say, the two mothers are extremely surprised.
Ultimately each child is reunited with his/her proper mother and they both leave the hill. Just before leaving Sal drops a blueberry into her still empty pail.