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57th out of 91 books
—
1,585 voters
Strawberry Girl (American Regional)
by
Lois Lenski
Birdie Boyer was a Florida Cracker. She belonged to a large "strawberry family," who lived on a flatwoods farm in the lake section of the state. They raised strawberries for a living.
Through all the hazards of the uncertain crop -- battling against dry weather and grass fires, the roving hogs and cattle of their neighbors -- Birdie dreamed of an education that would includ...more
Through all the hazards of the uncertain crop -- battling against dry weather and grass fires, the roving hogs and cattle of their neighbors -- Birdie dreamed of an education that would includ...more
Hardcover, 208 pages
Published
January 1st 1945
by HarperCollins
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Charming in the order of Caddie Woodlawn or Thimble Summer. Birdie and the other characters are as complex as can be expected. I enjoyed Lenski's description of the setting. As I've never been to that part of Florida, I appreciated "hearing" their speech and "seeing" their homes. In the foreward, Lenski mentions having visited Florida and spending time with the people she would write about. It seems she wanted to write stories set in a variety of communities in the States, so that Americans coul...more
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I like to think I've been reasonably successful in making readers out of my kids, though none of them loves it as much as I do. However, I haven't been terribly successful in passing on love of particular books. Strawberry Girl, along with Lois Lenski's other books about girls from various parts of the US, is one of those I loved but could never convince my older daughter to read. When NetGalley offered this one, I jumped at the chance to re-live part of my childhood (though I must admit that my...more
Oct 24, 2012
Ann Carpenter
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
historical,
newbery
This book almost rated four stars, but the highly improbably ending left a sour note in my mouth. I did not believe for a moment that a single kindness (even a long and sustained kindness) could so totally change the character of Mr. Slater. I could sort of see him being nice to the Boyers from now on, but his entire personality has changed. When he's talking about the death of his livlihood and entire way of life, it says that previously he'd have been in a rage, but now he was gentle as milk....more
When I was seven, my mom bribed me to read a Lois Lenski book, a moving story about a migrant farm family. All these years, I have remembered that book as "Strawberry Girl", but I realize now it was a different book. I checked various Lenski books and it must have been "Judy's Journey." (And judging by reviews, it appears that people seem to like "Judy's Journey" better than "Strawberry Girl.")
Anyway, we did "Strawberry Girl" as a read-aloud. I thought I would hate the dialect, but I rather like...more
Anyway, we did "Strawberry Girl" as a read-aloud. I thought I would hate the dialect, but I rather like...more
About:
Strawberry Girl is a 1946 Newbery Award winning book.
Berthenia Lou Boyer aka Birdie Boyer moves with her family to Florida to build a farm. They soon meet their neighbors the Slater family, and the two families begin somewhat of a feud. Jefferson Slater aka Shoestring Slater tells Birdie her family will never be able to grow and sell strawberries.
Birdie has her heart set on growing those strawberries and works as hard as she can to help her family plant and harvest. Soon enough there's p...more
Strawberry Girl is a 1946 Newbery Award winning book.
Berthenia Lou Boyer aka Birdie Boyer moves with her family to Florida to build a farm. They soon meet their neighbors the Slater family, and the two families begin somewhat of a feud. Jefferson Slater aka Shoestring Slater tells Birdie her family will never be able to grow and sell strawberries.
Birdie has her heart set on growing those strawberries and works as hard as she can to help her family plant and harvest. Soon enough there's p...more
Birdie moves to Florida with her family to build a farm, battling weather and neighbors opposing fences. With work and neighborly effort, Birdie’s family finally makes the strawberry crop into profits and settles things with the neighbors. The book contains descriptions of poor choices between the neighbors and the parents, as well as the strong dialect of the day.
In Strawberry Girl, Lois Lensky painted a detailed picture of the lives of Floridians in the middle 1900’s. It is astonishing to rea...more
In Strawberry Girl, Lois Lensky painted a detailed picture of the lives of Floridians in the middle 1900’s. It is astonishing to rea...more
Apr 16, 2011
Antof9
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Shelves:
2011-read,
americana,
animals,
fathers,
kidlit,
liberry,
makes-me-want-to-grow-stuff,
mothers,
read-the-newberys
I continue to be confused by what the Newbery committee is/was thinking and what they consider a level of appropriateness for children. I'm also surprised at what this author thought appropriate for children. I'm really of two minds on this, after reading about the author and this series. On the one hand, I love the idea of writing stories about different parts of the country so children could learn about them. On the other hand, there's all kinds of DRUNK in this book, and I'm just picturing a...more
In this perfect summertime story, the Boyer family relocates to Florida with plans of growing strawberries. Little do they know how much they'll have to overcome before they're enjoying fruit, however. In addition to droughts, heat, and extreme cold spells, they quickly learn that their neighbors, the Slaters, are less than welcoming. The Slaters allow their cattle to roam free, jeopardizing the young strawberry plants. Mr. Slater is just looking to pick a fight, and a big one, too. The Boyers m...more
Rereading a childhood favorite is a dangerous endeavor. However, last year rereading Reddy Fox went well, so when the ebook version of this Lois Lenski classic showed up on Netgalley, I just had to try it out. I can see why I enjoyed it as a child, but I can’t really imagine adding it to the collection if I was a public librarian or, in the realm of more possibility, giving it to my nephew.
This is part of a series that Lenski wrote and illustrated in the 1940s about children living in different...more
This is part of a series that Lenski wrote and illustrated in the 1940s about children living in different...more
I was not particularly enamored with this novel and think that there are better Lois Lenski books than this one. I am rather intrigued that it won the Newberry Award. I found many instances where something was introduced and left dangling.
I also thought it odd that she begins the book through the eyes of one character, Effie, (and she ends up a rather minor character in the story) and spends the rest of the book with the stream of consciousness being Birdie's. I was expecting more of a connecti...more
I also thought it odd that she begins the book through the eyes of one character, Effie, (and she ends up a rather minor character in the story) and spends the rest of the book with the stream of consciousness being Birdie's. I was expecting more of a connecti...more
Birdie Boyer is a young girl growing up in the early days of rural Florida. Her family raises strawberries and grows citrus. Life would be peaceful but tough if not for their difficult neighbors, the Slaters. The families face the challenges of their time -- brush fires, sickness, and a shortage of cash. Once Mr. Slater finds God, all's well that ends well.
Honestly, I don't even know what I think about this book. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a kid and the pioneer spirit appeals to me....more
Honestly, I don't even know what I think about this book. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a kid and the pioneer spirit appeals to me....more
This book is about a little girl who was determined to grow and sell strawberries. She grew up in the early nineteen hundreds when farming was a common means of living. She grew up in a fairly decent home where she had more than her neighbours. They moved from Carolina to Florida to find more fertile ground for their produce. This little girl they called "Birdie" was one who was always responsible, caring, and determined to get what she wants. She planted strawberries and they were eaten by anim...more
THE DEMISE OF THE OPEN RANGE
Set in the Florida backwoods of the early 1900's this story is one of several books by Lois Lenski with a specific regional flavor. This author deliberately chose various rural areas of the country in which to live, get to know the people about whom she was writing, make accurate sketches of the objects she found there, and perform detailed research of recent past events. Featuring the dirt poor "Crackers" STRAWBERRY GIRL introduces mainstream American kids to such i...more
Set in the Florida backwoods of the early 1900's this story is one of several books by Lois Lenski with a specific regional flavor. This author deliberately chose various rural areas of the country in which to live, get to know the people about whom she was writing, make accurate sketches of the objects she found there, and perform detailed research of recent past events. Featuring the dirt poor "Crackers" STRAWBERRY GIRL introduces mainstream American kids to such i...more
1946 Newberry winner about the Boyer family, who move from the Carolinas to rural Florida and buy a farm. They immediately begin to feud with their neighbors, the Slaters, a poor, rural family with a drunken, domineering father and rowdy, disrespectful children. The Slaters run their cattle and hogs over the Boyer property, destroying strawberry plants and the orange grove. Mr. Boyer retaliates by killing some hogs, and the feud continues. Of course everything works out in the end. I liked the d...more
Jan 27, 2011
Jill
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
8+, would be fun as a read-aloud chapter book with the interesting dialect!
Shelves:
newbery-medal
This as an interesting historical snapshot of life for the Cracker people in Florida. At first I found the language cumbersome but after a while I got used to it. Life was challenging for these people. The children were involved in a lot of the chores of the farm--chopping heads off chickens, planting and weeding crops--and along with all the work they have the feud with their neighbors to worry about. Even though this is the first I've heard of these so-called Crackers it seems like it is prett...more
I picked up Strawberry Girl because it won the 1946 Newbery Award.
Birdie Boyer and her family have moved down to southern Florida to start a farm. But they’ve got very different ideas about things than the neighbors, the Slaters. The Boyers and the Slaters butt heads from the beginning about everything from open pastures to planting crops. This whole story is very “regional” and takes place around the beginning of the 20th century. Here’s a sample from the first chapter:
“I got me an orange tree,...more
Birdie Boyer and her family have moved down to southern Florida to start a farm. But they’ve got very different ideas about things than the neighbors, the Slaters. The Boyers and the Slaters butt heads from the beginning about everything from open pastures to planting crops. This whole story is very “regional” and takes place around the beginning of the 20th century. Here’s a sample from the first chapter:
“I got me an orange tree,...more
Backwoods Florida sounds to be as rough and tumble as the wild west. They had the same problems with ranging cattle ... and what about those "biggety" folk who come from the North (that is, "Caroliny") with their annoying habits, such as attending school, actually feeding their livestock, planting crops, painting their houses, putting up fences to keep the friendly neighborhood livestock from destroying their crops, and going to church.
I don't want to give anything away, but I would have prefer...more
I don't want to give anything away, but I would have prefer...more
Mar 02, 2013
Jennifer
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
literature-and-composition
Strawberry Girl is one of the books in Lois Lenski's Regional Series, in which she describes the lives of children and families in different areas of the United States at the turn of the last century. This novel, the second in the series, is set in Polk County, Florida and explores the conflict between the old homesteader "Crackers" who believed all of the land was theirs by virtue of having been there, and a new group of settlers who wanted to tame the land by fencing and farming. This novel wa...more
Strawberry Girl
_____________________________________
This book is about a ten year old girl named Birdie Boyer who enjoys planting strawberries in her mothers garden. Birdie's family moves to Florida to plant their strawberries. While there they have a conflict with their neighbors about them raising cattle and letting their animal roam loose. Shoestring Slater is one of Birdie's neighbor's his horse ruins the Boyer's strawberries. The Boyer's try to reason with the family but their conflict j...more
_____________________________________
This book is about a ten year old girl named Birdie Boyer who enjoys planting strawberries in her mothers garden. Birdie's family moves to Florida to plant their strawberries. While there they have a conflict with their neighbors about them raising cattle and letting their animal roam loose. Shoestring Slater is one of Birdie's neighbor's his horse ruins the Boyer's strawberries. The Boyer's try to reason with the family but their conflict j...more
Set in the eartly 1900s and part of Lois Lenski's regional series of books for children, this is the story of the Boyer family settling in Florida after living in North Carolina. The Boyer family, who are farmers, move next door to the Otis family who make their livelyhood raising cattle. So not only is there conflict against the newcomers who are considered uppity, but tensions arise when the Otis cows wander into the strawberry fields of the Boyer's. When the strawberry fields are fenced in th...more
Wow -- such a strange book. I'm trying to read all of the Newbery winners, and definitely the honor books, just because I'd like to get a feel for the history of it. Not having a context for a lot of the early winners, nor for Lenski, I just kind of found this to be fascinating. Mostly because I had no idea where she was going with it. When religion enters the picture later, I felt a little weirded out, but I guess that was the best case scenario of what could have happened. It was so unpredicta...more
How could a child read this book and complain about her life in 21st century America? The two families in this book suffer from the ravages of grasshoppers, illness, hunger, and jealousy. They argue and fight with each other, eventually going so far as to kill each other’s animals and set fire to the other’s farmhouse. A hardscrabble life complete with rattlesnakes and alligators and swamps. Yet there was also a beauty to this life, of neighbors helping each other, even when they have little for...more
Thanks to NetGalley for providing the eBook version of this classic. I've been meaning to read it for quite a while. The story was fine...but quite dated. I can see kids having a hard time with the dialogue. But at the time Lenski wrote the book, she was trying to provide children with an idea of what life was like in different places all over the country.
Summary: Birdie Boyer and her family have just moved into the backwoods of Florida and face all kinds of challenges in starting their farm. In...more
Summary: Birdie Boyer and her family have just moved into the backwoods of Florida and face all kinds of challenges in starting their farm. In...more
I enjoyed the story of Birdie and her family, farmers in Florida. The tension with the neighbors because of the fences was well done. I knew that had happened in the west, but didn't realize it took place in Florida as well.
I thought the characters of Birdie and Shoestring were fairly well drawn. Some of the other characters, like Shoestring's brothers and father, were rather one-dimensional. I appreciated the dilemma that Shoestring's mother faced, trying (sort of) to keep good relationships w...more
I thought the characters of Birdie and Shoestring were fairly well drawn. Some of the other characters, like Shoestring's brothers and father, were rather one-dimensional. I appreciated the dilemma that Shoestring's mother faced, trying (sort of) to keep good relationships w...more
1 like · like · see review
One of my favorite Girl Stories- and set in Florida, no less! Every time I hear someone called a "Cracker," I think of this book:
Miss Liddy hurried over. "The Crackers are coming," she explained."Just cowmen with their cattle! Hear how they crack their long, rawhide whips. They're driving a big herd to market at Tampa, to ship to Cuba most likely. Probably came from way up yonder by Jacksonville, buyin' up beef cattle all along the way." She paused. "Folks born in Florida or who have lived here...more
I loved this book. It's about a family living on a farm in Florida in the early 1900s, when that state was still very undeveloped. It has lots of tales about how they live and how they interact with their neighbors, especially the mean drunken Mr. Slater, who causes no end to problems. This novel is fiction, but everything that happens in it is based on real stories told to the author by people who lived in the Florida wilderness at the time of the story. The book has a cool map of early Florida...more
Almost gave up around page 35 until I saw it had won the Newbery. Now I feel like I have to finish it.
Some of my issues with this book might be my own personal bias--in general, I can't handle dialect. The meanness of the Boyers and the Slaters really bothered me. I do not expect all children's books to be sweetness and light (and want kids to be challenged), but I don't think I would share this book with a child.
And of course, the whole time, I was slightly creeped out because the illustrations...more
Some of my issues with this book might be my own personal bias--in general, I can't handle dialect. The meanness of the Boyers and the Slaters really bothered me. I do not expect all children's books to be sweetness and light (and want kids to be challenged), but I don't think I would share this book with a child.
And of course, the whole time, I was slightly creeped out because the illustrations...more
Random pick off the Newberry shelf. A charming story about life in frontier-times Florida. So, I learned some history and found a spunky new heroine to model myself after. I am having Harley read it so that she can get a taste of what life was like a 150 years ago... maybe count her blessings that she gets to go school, have all the amenities of technology, and hold on to her own courageous, kind attitude. A great, quick read. Also, this author has written several "regional" books to help younge...more
I had a little problem with the dialect - I actually had to think to try to figure out what they were saying until I got the hang of it. This book reminded me of The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings although I think that book was set in a later time period. Although it is historical I think it could be same the story of a lot of groups of people living in rural areas of the US at that time - they'd just have a different dialect and different local flora and fauna and crops. I did like this book's s...more
I really tried to like this but it just bored me.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Lenski
Many of Lenski's books can be collated into 'series' - but since they don't have to be read in order, you may be better off just looking for more information here: http://library.illinoisstate.edu/uniq...
Probably her most famous set is the following:
American Regional Series
Beginning with Bayou Suzette in 1943, Lois Lenski began writing a series of books whic...more
More about Lois Lenski...
Many of Lenski's books can be collated into 'series' - but since they don't have to be read in order, you may be better off just looking for more information here: http://library.illinoisstate.edu/uniq...
Probably her most famous set is the following:
American Regional Series
Beginning with Bayou Suzette in 1943, Lois Lenski began writing a series of books whic...more
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