Bookshelf: 'The Berry-Picking Man'

Posted: Sunday, April 27, 2003

Meggie is constantly told she's too young. Her mother won't allow her to stay home alone and her sisters won't allow her to tag along with them and their friends.

Nine-year-old Meggie wants two things: a camera so she can take pictures as good as her photographer mom's, and not to have to go along when Sam, the berry-picking man, calls for a ride. Until she's older, her mother insists, she will get neither the camera nor the option to stay home alone.

Meggie regrets that she lacks her mother's compassion. She knows she should feel sorry for a man who spent 25 years in a psychiatric hospital. But all she sees when she looks at Sam is a man who talks to himself, refuses to wash regularly and for reasons unfathomable to her, insists that Meggie is "his favorite."

Faced with the reality of Sam, Meggie finds it hard to hear her mother when she says: "Nothing's black and white. Look closely. It's degrees of gray, shadow and light."

Sam does share the sweetest berries and, at summer's end, the luscious grapes, Meggie loves. She and her sisters decide to stomp the grapes as the Italian winemakers used to do. For their efforts they get purple feet and the best grape chiffon pie Mom ever made. "You would never know it had feet in it, says Meggie's sister, Lissa.

A wonderful chapter book, "The Berry-Picking man" helps young readers learn that they can't dismiss the mentally disabled, can't hide from things that don't make pretty pictures. Life's hurdles aren't black and white but lie somewhere in the gray area where kindness, conscience and empathy abound.

- Deborah Elliott-Upton

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