What a delightful book! Mr. and Mrs. Apple are the parents of five little Apple children: Macintosh, Jonathan, Delicious, Snow and Ann Apple. Mr. Apple is the one who wanted to name all of his children after types of apples, and the first chapter of the book tells how he managed to do so, almost. Then the story moves on to tell about how the Apple family outgrow their apartment in the city and work hard to buy a little crooked house in the country.
This easy chapter book with six stories or chapters is another one of the books I purchased from The Good and the Beautiful’s closeout sale. But this one is no longer available at a reasonable price, so if you see a used copy, snap it up. The illustrations are by classic illustrator Ninon (MacKnight) who was born in Australia, but came to the U.S. as an adult and became a well regarded artist for children’s books and for greeting cards. Her black and white illustrations for Mr. Apple’s Family are simple and sweet and quite suited to the simplicity and sweetness of the story itself.
A long time ago I had a curriculum idea book from the company Good Apple with lots of worksheets and crafts and puzzles and coloring sheets, all about apples. The idea was for teachers to do a fall/September unit study about apples that encompassed math, science, language, and literature. Although unit studies can be overdone, I think this book about Mr. Apple’s family, along with A Basket of Plums, and a few apple activities, plus a few apples to munch on, would make a fun story time or mini-homeschool unit study.
More Apple Books in the library:
- Apple-picking Time by Michele Slawson
- Apple Fractions by Jerry Pallotta
- From Apple Seed to Applesauce by Hannah Lyons Johnson
- The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree by Gail GIbbons
- Cezanne and the Apple Boy by Laurence Anholt
- How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
- How Do Apples Grow? by Betsy Maestro
- Applebet: An ABC by Clyde Watson
- Spaceship Under the Apple Tree by Louis Slobodkin
I also like how the Apple family members, over the course of the entire story, are learning to honor one another in community as they make choices or give up their right to choose to allow for the preferences of others. As the story puts it, “They knew that they could not always have what they wanted. (Someone else) must sometimes have what they wanted.” Embedded in the story in several places, it’s not so much a moral lesson as a true commentary on the way the world should work, if we were all busy loving one another. And as the Bible says (Proverbs 25:11), “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”