“The stars are made of lemon juice . . . and rain makes applesauce.

The wind blows backwards all night long . . . and rain makes applesauce.

Salmon slide down a hippo’s hide . . . and rain makes applesauce.”

I used to read this book to my kindergarten and first grade classes many moons ago when I was a school librarian. The children would soon join in on the chorus: “Rain makes applesauce!” It only takes a few pages for kids and grown-ups to get the idea of this ridiculously nonsensical picture book poem. Take a modicum of rhythm, maybe a rhyme or some alliteration, and add the refrain “rain makes applesauce,” and you can play this word game all day long. After you finish reading all the silly sentences in the book, you and the kids can make up your own.

(Z-baby saw me looking at this book, and she had to have me read it to her. She says, “Rain doesn’t really make applesauce; rain makes WATER!”)

The odd thing about this book (well, one odd thing) is that it was written by a NASA public relations guy? Mr. Scheer definitely had a bit of whimsy in his character as well as space science and journalism. And Rain Makes Applesauce became a Caldecott Honor book, an award given for the excellence of the illustrations.

Those pictures by Marvin Bileck are delightfully busy, harlequin-like pictures of children and giants and clowns and fairies and gnomes doing all sorts of silly things. Some of the pictures look as if they’ve been washed over by the rain that makes applesauce. And in every illustration there is a very significant tree.

At the end of this nonsensical story-list of impossible events, actions, and observations, we visit The Sea of Applesauce and realize that rain really does make applesauce. No apples without rain, no applesauce without apples, falling from the tree.

(Oh, you’re just talking silly talk. I know I’m talking silly talk, but RAIN MAKES APPLESAUCE!)