Blue Willow

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 when the family goes fishing beside the river. When Janey's mother 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. However, after she tells Bounce's boss what is happening, he fires Reyburn and hires Janey's dad. The boss and Lupe's brothers then build Janey's dream house for her family. ==Symbolism==

Janey's blue willow plate is her one prized possession. It belonged to her great-great-grandmother, and reminds Janey of her birth mother, who died so long ago Janey can hardly remember her. The fragile plate holds both her past and her future. To Janey the plate symbolizes the home she had before they lost their land and became migrant farmers. The plate represents Janey's hope for a better life and a real home. When Janey, somewhat nervously, shows it to Lupe and her friend understands how important and beautiful it is to Janey, the girls' friendship is solidified. ==Significance==

Blue Willow has been called "the first social- or realistic-problem novel for children". The Blue Willow manuscript is held in the May Massee Collection at Emporia State University. ==Awards and reception==

Blue Willow was a Newbery Honor book in 1941, won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1961, and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Horn Book Magazine; It also won the silver Commonwealth Club of California Book Award. It has continued to be well received. Choosing Books for Kids says of it, "Family life in the thirties in a poignant story that has outlasted the era it tells about." Children's literature expert May Hill Arbuthnot calls Blue Willow "a tender and beautifully written book". Another reviewer wrote "One sees in Blue Willow a perfect combination of realistic depiction of setting, careful study of character, and the structural patterns of romance, the linear journey to fulfillment. The book is Gates's major literary achievement and an important contribution to American children's literature." ==See also==