Blue Willow

infobox Book |
name = Blue Willow


image_caption = 1970 cover, based on first edition design
author = Doris Gates
illustrator = Paul Lantz
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Children's novel
publisher = Viking Press
pub_date = 1940
media_type = Print (Hardcover)
pages = 172pp
isbn =
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Blue Willow" is a children's book by Doris Gates, published in 1940. It is a Newbery Honor book, having been a runner-up for the Newbery Medal in 1941. This story of a migrant child who longs for a permanent home was considered groundbreaking in its portrayal of contemporary working-class life in America.

Plot summary

Janey Larkin is the ten-year-old daughter of a migrant family in San Joaquin Valley, California, in the late 1930s when America is still suffering the effects of the Great Depression. Her most treasured possession is a Blue Willow plate that had once belonged to her great-great-grandmother. The picture of a bridge and a stream and a little house on the willow pattern plate represents the permanent home she dreams of.

Janey can barely remember her old home, a farm in Texas, and now that her father is an itinerant worker she has no place to call her own and no lasting friends, as the family has to move constantly. Despite the grinding poverty, the family is close and loving, and fun is had, as when Janey and her friend Lupe attend the county fair and ride the carousel.

When Janey's stepmother falls sick, they have difficulty paying the rent. The rent-collector, Bounce Reyburn, is unsympathetic, and Janey is faced with having to sacrifice her one treasure.

Literary significance

At the time of the book's publication there was a debate about whether children's literature should be imaginative or realistic. "Blue Willow" combined both approaches. It was judged to have the literary quality and positive values required by librarians and educators as well as having child appeal. It was considered a breakthrough book both for its contemporary working-class setting and for the rounded portrayal of Janey's Mexican-American friend, Lupe Romero and her family. Many writers of the realist school preferred setting their books in foreign countries or in the past, possibly to avoid any suggestion of leftist propaganda. In "Horn Book", Jan/Feb 1945, Howard Pease's essay "Without Evasion" mentions Doris Gates as one of the rare exceptions: "Only at infrequent intervals do you find a story intimately related to this modern world, a story that takes up a modern problem and thinks it through without evasion. Of our thousands of books, I can find scarcely half a dozen that merit places on this almost vacant shelf in our libraries; and of our hundreds of authors, I can name only three who are doing anything to fill this void in children's reading. These three authors - may someone present each of them with a laurel wreath - are Doris Gates, John R. Tunis, and Florence Crannell Means." [ [https://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/bitstream/2142/8058/1/librarytrendsv44i4i_opt.pdf "Library Trends", Spring 1996] ]

References