A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith

Last Was Lloyd, 1981, was a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Return to Bitter Creek, 1986, received the Parents' Choice Award, and was named a School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. In a review for the School Library Journal (2002), Ann Welton wrote that Smith's book is 'rightfully viewed, along with Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia, 1977, as one of the seminal children's books on the subject of death.' It is an ALA Notable Children's Book, a Newbery Medal finalist, and has been translated into Dutch, Danish, French, Spanish and Japanese. Ī Taste of Blackberries won the Josette Frank Award, the Georgia Children's Book Award, and the Best Children's Book Prize of a translated work in the Netherlands ( Zilveren Griffel). the story is not, however an elegy but a celebration of the continuity of the life-death cycle.' David Rees, in The Times Literary Supplement, 1975, declared, 'It will be difficult to find a children's book this autumn by a new author as good as Doris Buchanan Smith's A Taste of Blackberries.' 'It blazed the way for the many other grief books that quickly followed, but few have approached the place of honor this one holds,' wrote Jim Trelease in The Read-Aloud Handbook (Penguin, Sixth Edition, 2006). In the early 1970s, along with authors such as Katherine Paterson and Judy Blume, Smith established 'a solid reputation for accessible fiction with serious themes.' A Taste of Blackberries 'deals honestly and emphatically with the range of emotions,' wrote Cynthia Westway in The Atlanta Journal, 1973, '. First Edition.ĭoris Buchanan Smith's, A Taste of Blackberries (HarperCollins, 1973), earned critical acclaim as well as comparisons with Charlotte's Web (HarperCollins, 1952).

A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith.