Picture Book Review: The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher

Title: The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher

Author: Molly Bang

Date: 1980, 1996

Publisher: Simon Schuster / aladdin

ISBN: 0-689-80381-8

Length:pages not numbered

This is a real "picture book" consisting only of pictures, without words. The pictures are colorful, if not realistic, and charming enough to amuse adults. The Grey Lady, dressed all in pale whitish-grey so that in some pictures only her face and hands are distinguishable, buys strawberries from the fruit-and-vegetable vendor, whose table is heaped with colorful bell peppers, cucumbers, broccoli, grapes, peaches, and red plums. As she walks away from the fruit stand, past the flower vendor in her gorgeous print dress, she passes a funny-looking little character whose conical hat and visible skin are all the same shade of bright blue-violet, like a blue grape. This is the Strawberry Snatcher, who follows the Grey Lady through a quaint shopping plaza full of colorful little shops, out to the bus stop, through a swamp where some trees are already bare, some are evergreen, and some are bright red and orange, and a rare, improbable second growth of blackberries finally distract the Snatcher and allow the Lady to take her berries home to her family in peace.

By way of a surprise ending we learn that the spry, fast-moving, bundled-up Grey Lady's family includes not only a banjo-picking Grey Man, but a slimmer, younger-faced, white-haired woman in colorful, fashionable clothes, who feeds a strawberry to the baby, and two grandchildren, wearing summer clothes in a house that's obviously heated for the old people's comfort. And a cat. And a parrot.

When we read children's books that contained anomalies like a big crop of big healthy blackberries growing in woods where the trees are already changing color, my mother's word used to be "stupid." I've never felt a need to be so judgmental. If it's been a damp year and small, young oak trees are being shaded out by taller, older trees, I've seen them change color and shed their leaves in July, when blackberries ripen--due to a fungus infection called fire blight. So, was Bang naively observing an outbreak of fire blight, or did she just want to throw some pretty fall pictures in with the summer pictures that go with this story? Who can say? Likewise in the homecoming scene, where the little boy feels no need for a shirt under his baggy short overalls, while the old lady who's not bundled in a big grey shawl is wearing a cardigan and leg warmers...people who take blood pressure pills always want the heater cranked up far too high to suit other people.

For many people, the pictures are appealing enough that they don't mind discussing their strangeness with children. This doesn't mean that The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher is likely to displace stories with mediocre pictures that offer children the pleasure of actually being read to, unless you make up your own words to the story and the child or children in your life want to hear that over and over. Still, this picture book won a Caldecott Honor and has gone through multiple printings.