Strawberry Girl
Acceptable with guidance. Age: 10+. A Catholic review of this book for parents.
Our review
Birdie Boyer is ten. Her family moves to the Florida backwoods to farm, and she grows strawberries. Their neighbors, the Slaters, let their animals wreck the Boyers' crops, and a feud grows. Birdie and her mother keep being kind, and in the end the Slaters' father changes and the two families make peace. The kindness is lovely, but the feud is rougher than the cover suggests: fights, killed animals, a fire and drinking. Age 10+, set by Lumen's read-alone age; Plugged In says 8-12.
For parents
Age 10+, set by Lumen's read-alone age (Plugged In's range is 8-12; Kirkus in 1945 said third and fourth graders). Read it aloud from 8, editing as you go. Plugged In rates violence moderate and drinking noticeable, with no profanity or sex. It lists a fistfight between the fathers, hogs killed, a mule killed or poisoned, a prairie fire that burns the schoolhouse, boys beating their teacher, Birdie's father whipping Shoestring, and a drunk man shooting his chickens' heads off. Most of it is not graphic. Sam Slater's conversion at a meeting is celebrated with strawberry wine, and the preacher is a traveling revival-style preacher; the book shows no sacraments, so a Catholic parent can fill in what the Church teaches about grace and conversion. Plugged In notes dated words ('Negro') in 1945 usage. Ask: how did Birdie and her mother answer meanness? Talk about forgiving neighbors and about the harm of drink.