A little girl and a bear cub wander off while blueberry picking and end up following the wrong mothers
A mix-up on Blueberry Hill
Little Sal and her mother climb Blueberry Hill in Maine with their pails to pick berries for winter. Sal keeps eating more than she saves. On the other side of the hill, a mother bear and her cub have come for blueberries too, to fatten up before the cold. Both little ones lag behind their mothers, and before long Sal is following a bear and the cub is following Sal's mother.
Who will enjoy it
Young children aged about three to seven, and the adults who read to them, especially families who love the outdoors.
What you will get
A gentle, funny and timeless picture book about a little girl, a bear cub and a mix-up on a summer hillside, drawn in beautiful blue ink.
Blueberries for Sal Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Children’s Books · Picture book · Bears · Maine
Length
64 pages · ≈ 2 h
More about this book
Nothing terrible happens in this book, and that is part of its charm. The parallel scenes, the two mothers walking ahead, the two little ones munching berries, the slow discovery of the mix-up, build gentle suspense, and young listeners love spotting what the characters have not noticed yet. The sound of berries dropping into Sal's tin pail becomes a refrain that children repeat for days.
Robert McCloskey drew the pictures in a dark blue ink that suits the subject perfectly, and his details of the Maine landscape, the farmhouse kitchen and the round, determined Sal are lovely to linger over; Sal was modelled on his own daughter. The bears are drawn naturally, never cartoonishly, and the mothers' surprised reactions are funny without being frightening. Everyone returns safely, and the book ends with jars of berries put up for winter.
A classic for reading aloud on a summer evening, it pairs well with McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings and One Morning in Maine. Few picture books have aged so gracefully. The short text makes it a perfect bedtime book for children just starting to follow a story. About 64 pages in the Puffin paperback.
Make Way for Ducklings
The Snowy Day
Where the Wild Things Are
Ballet Shoes
Stuart Little
The Borrowers Afield
Heidi
A Bear Called Paddington
Princess Academy
Misty of Chincoteague
Llama Llama Mad at Mama
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