Friendships and Feuds: Learning to See Past Beefs in Strawberry Girl
We all have that friend that is complicated. The friend that is hard to deal with but not an enemy, just one you don’t get along with all the time. Friendships are not something that you should take for granted, they are something to be cherished and well loved. Some people can be hard to understand but once you get the feel of them you can see what they are like. In the book Strawberry Girl, two kids, Shoestring Slater and Birdie Boyer, share this kind of friendship. They are not friends all of the time, but they will come to one another if they need something. The two kids have very different backgrounds, one came from Carolina and the other already from Florida, where the story is set. They learn to be friends because their families are so different and because they are honest with each other as well as being literal neighbors and schoolmates.
Though the Boyers and Slaters are neighbors, they have very contrasting lifestyles. The Boyers have a lot of land and hard working animals and good, healthy children. The Slaters have less land, less food for their family, and they have animals who get less attention, therefore are less tame. The Boyers are polite and well looked upon because of their kindness to others. The Slaters are looked down upon because they are poor (we see Mr. Slater spending most of the little money they earn on alcohol). Also several of them (but not all) are obnoxious and rowdy. The fact that Shoestring is not like the rest of his family, being more sensitive and caring, he understands the Boyers more. He trusts Birdie and that makes it a lot easier for them to be friends. Birdie also trusts in Shoestring even if she doesn’t always trust his family.
The first day Birdie went to school, she got a bad impression of the Slaters. Shoestring’s brothers attacked the teacher and that made Birdie more fearful of them. The brothers acted out of their shame, like most bullies do. Shoestring is different from his brothers because he does not have as much pride, but he also does not like to be looked down upon either. It seems like he is able to be a different person at school versus the pressure he feels to be like his dishonest father at home. At school he uses his literal name, Jefferson Davis Slater, instead of Shoestring, indicating he is different than his family. He wants to try and change things for the Slaters and sees the Boyers as perhaps a “new start”, even when his father forbids him to help them various times in the book. For instance, he still chooses to reach out to Birdie to tell her about the pliers in his father’s back pocket that he will use to cut the Boyer’s fence.
Later in the book, Birdie is proud to introduce Shoestring to the teacher, Mrs. Dunnaway, because he is different from his scary, bullying brothers. He assures his frightened teacher that he is not here to fight, but “come to git book-larnin’” (189). He shows more compassion and pays closer attention to his feelings than his family. She is not ashamed to be Shoestring’s friend and defends him because she has had experience with his capabilities. She tells Mrs. Dunnaway, ”But Shoestring…I mean, Jeff’s different!…He ain’t rough and wild like Gus and Joe!” (190).
Even though they are good friends they can have conflicting feelings and they don’t always have the same point of view. This actually makes their friendship stronger. After Mr. Boyer chops off the top of Slater’s hog’s ear, Shoestring comes to warn Birdie as an act of friendship, but as a son still strongly defends his family. “Iffen your Pa don’t leave our hogs alone, Pa means what he says: he’ll git him yet! I just come over to tell you” (50). Birdie says, “her voice bitter with scorn” that Mr. Slater is being a coward by sending his son to be his messenger (51). After their shouting match they realized they didn’t want their Dad to get their guns out and escalate the situation. “Birdie thought for awhile. This was a surprise. It looked as if Shoestring didn’t want trouble any more that she did” (51).
At the candy pulling event Birdie is looking to have fun, but she gets partnered with Shoestring who “was glum as if he were at a funeral” (88). Birdie wants to play with those who are able to enjoy the day and she has dismissive thoughts about Shoestring and his family even as he is trying to tell her why he’s upset. He trusts her and cares for her family enough to share his father’s malicious plots with her. Shoestring sees her as someone who is trusting, one of the few who can at times see past their poverty and his Dad’s foolish decisions. Birdie is always inviting the Slaters to events and to their house both because she has taken a liking to the Slater sisters and sees them as needing help. Thus, Birdie’s experience as an older sister helps her naturally take care of Shoestring’s younger sisters and his mother. She understands what they need and this dynamic helps strengthen the bond between her and Shoestring.
We all have complicated friends, but to make the friendship work or not work it “takes two to tango”. Birdie and Shoestring both really want to be friends with each other and believe that the other person has their best interest in mind even when they raise their voices to each other. They don’t leave their problems hanging; they hash it out. They protect each other around their own family, they are honest with each other and defend each other. Strawberry Girl shows that two people from different places can become friends and trust one another by overcoming family differences and personality differences. Birdie and Shoestring provide a role model friendship for readers to experience.
Works Cited Page
Lenski, Lois. Strawberry Girl. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1945.
From time to time I will feature student work here on the blog (always with their permission). Emma and I worked on this essay in our 2024/2025 tutoring time after finishing Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski. After given a list of options, she gravitated toward the themes around friendship. We brainstormed some contrast and comparisons and the paper was finished in about a month. Emma’s passionate voice and thoughtfulness really comes through in this paper and it’s no wonder because she herself is a loyal, welcoming friend. Taking a book written 80 years ago and infusing its meaning with modern eyes while keeping the integrity of the text is phenomenal for a 7th grader, and Emma pulled it off wonderfully. We also laughed at the title for the paper she came up with for 5 minutes after looking at thesaurus for conflict!
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