Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 2^-3. Using her familiar appealing, color-washed drawings and minimal text, Gibbons spotlights a favorite fruit. Plenty of information appears in both words and images, including identification of the basic parts of the apple; some historical scenes of the apple in America (including both Johnny Appleseed and a picture of smiling Native American and Pilgrim families sharing a large bowl of shiny reds); and the apple's progress through the seasons, from blossom to fruit to harvest to Halloween bobbing and caramel coating. The final pages include pictures of different apple varieties; instructions on how to plant and care for an apple tree, bake a pie, make cider; and a back page of random fun facts. Although the book lacks organization and cohesion, there is still plenty here for young botanists who may be encountering clearly explained words such as dormant and pollination for the first time. Teachers putting together elementary science units about growth cycles and food production may also find this useful. --Gillian Engberg
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Curious about apples? Gail Gibbons's book (Holiday House, 2000) provides a clear, concise overview of apples, including their history, varieties, growth, harvesting, different parts, and uses. There are also quick facts about apples, a recipe for apple pie, and information on how to make apple cider. Bonnie Kelley Young reads the text slowly so that listeners can absorb all the facts and instructions and peruse the bright illustrations. Page-turn signals are optional. A good choice for elementary science units and to satisfy requests in the fall for books about apples.-Katie Llera, Milltown Public Library, NJ (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
This cursory history of the apple in North America, which includes information on the apple's life cycle, apple products, recipes, and varieties, suffers from a lack of cohesion, combining everything from Halloween apple bobbing to biology vocabulary such as carpels and stigma. Each page contains full-color panel illustrations of trees, fruit, and simplified people. From HORN BOOK Spring 2001, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This colorful and accessible title offers the scientific as well as the practical for the beginning reader. Gibbons (My Baseball Book, p. 475, etc.) provides a brief history of the apple, an explanation of how the apple grows from flower to fruit, and how apples are picked, processed, and sold. She also provides a recipe for apple pie, shows how an apple press makes apple cider, and illustrates some popular apple varieties. Each page has only a few lines of text, and a full-color drawing. For example, Gibbons states: An apple is a firm, crisp fleshy fruit with a hard center called a core. The core has five seed chambers. The accompanying illustration shows an apple inside and out, with core, stem, skin, seed chambers, and seeds carefully labeled. She concludes with additional statistics and facts about apples. Betsy Maestros How Do Apples Grow (1992), a Lets-Read-and-Find Out Science title on the same reading level, provides much more detail on the development of the apple, discussing and labeling flower parts pollen, pollination, and the developing fruit. This title illustrates more apple varieties, and includes a recipe. School and public libraries will certainly welcome this addition to the crop. (Nonfiction. 6-8)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
