Blue Willow - Significance

Significance

Blue Willow has been called "the first social- or realistic-problem novel for children". It was well received but not without criticism for its topic. The character of Janey Larkin became a symbol for proponents of realistic fiction for children. At the time of the book's publication there was a debate about whether children's literature should be imaginative or realistic. In fact, though, Blue Willow combines realism and imagination. The setting is almost brutally realistic, but Janey's devotion to the plate and the home it represents depends upon her ability to look beyond her circumstances and believe in a dream. Blue Willow was seen to have the literary quality and positive values sought by librarians and educators as well as appealing to children. It was considered a breakthrough book for its contemporary working-class setting and for the rounded portrayal of Janey's Mexican-American friend, Lupe Romero, and her family. Because of the success of Blue Willow there was an "expansion of the range of subjects which could be explored in books for children."

Many writers of the realist school preferred setting their books in foreign countries or in the past, possibly to avoid any suggestion of leftist propaganda. In Horn Book magazine Howard Pease's essay "Without Evasion" mentions Doris Gates as one of the rare exceptions: "Only at infrequent intervals do you find a story intimately related to this modern world, a story that takes up a modern problem and thinks it through without evasion. Of our thousands of books, I can find scarcely half a dozen that merit places on this almost vacant shelf in our libraries; and of our hundreds of authors, I can name only three who are doing anything to fill this void in children's reading. These three authors - may someone present each of them with a laurel wreath - are Doris Gates, John R. Tunis, and Florence Crannell Means."

The Blue Willow manuscript is held in the May Massee Collection at Emporia State University.