The Strawberry Jam

Ted McGee is an associate professor of English (Children’s Literature)
at St. Jerome’s College, University of Waterloo.

The Strawberry Jam is not for two-and-a-half-year-olds: “Dis book
weiwrd.” It did, however, hold the attention of our five-and-a-half
year old, who was especially pleased when the Noshers transformed from
evil to good. Children a couple of years older are probably the ideal
audience for the story, which has some bilingual word play and employs
quatrains throughout.

McConnell’s plot and characters are predictable: with the Strawberry
planet on the brink of destruction, the wise, wispy crone Fragola
returns from “long and lonely years / In the shadow of a sign,” and
saves the Strawberry Queen, Prince Sillabub, Princess Sillabee, and
their subjects from the ambitious Fraise, his gnomic sidekick Shortcake,
and their destructive crew of Noshers. Lott’s richly colored, luminous
illustrations are Disneyesque: figures and faces, sharply delineated to
capture emotion, are set against soft, featureless backgrounds.
Unfortunately, the illustrations do no more than illustrate what the
words have established.

For older children, the story’s moral—“It’s hate that divides
and love that unites, / It will always be that way. / It takes caring
and sharing and giving / To turn darkness to day.”—may prompt some
discussion. Fragola’s motives for returning to save the Strawberry
planet prove the point best. But the plot teaches another lesson, a more
materialistic one. Put somewhat crassly, it is this: to win over foes
fed by cream, feed them strawberries and cream. If this, too, is
conventional wisdom, it is not out of place in this book.