A trip down blueberry lane

Fuse #8 is in the midst of her review of the top 100 children's picture books voted on by the cyber community of children's lit lovers.

 Coming in at #31 is Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.   This picture book won a Caldecott honor in 1949, and even though our attention is on the Newbery, not the Caldecott, it's the blueberry I want to treat as the catalyst for thinking about children's books.  How does memory, sensory and otherwise, play a part in your engagement with a children's book, whether you are reading it for the first time or the hundredth time?   I always thought of Sal as a boy and I wondered why they weren't making pie with those berries instead of jarring them, and why didn't the bear eat the boy/girl instead of the berries and why is the book all blue and does Sal really like wearing those overalls?  Those are the questions I had when I remember reading the book. Now I know what those bracelets are on Sal's arm!



Jamberry by Bruce Degen is another berry book I loved reading to my children.   There is a remarkable wordless double page spread suspended in the middle of the book--where the bear and the boy  are hanging on to their upside-down canoe under a torrent of blueberries that had been in the boat before it went over the waterfall. The page opens up after the verse on the previous page: "Under the bridge/and over the dam/Looking for berries/Berries for jam." Bruce Degen notes in his afterword that he went berry picking when he was young and remembers eating washed berries with sour cream and sugar, smelling blueberry pie baking in the oven, and blackberry jam cooking on the stove. When I read these books again I am re/encountering the sensation of reading. Pleasure comes from re/membering the pictures re/enlisting the sight and sounds of words meandering or prancing across the page.  When I wonder why it is that I love children's books I remember a hidden garden, the smell of ripe boxwood, the taste of a honeysuckle droplet on my tongue, and the sound of my cousin Sally reciting :

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleson pie


Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.


Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.