Hello, World! How Do Apples Grow?

April 15, 2019
Simple factual information is delivered on sturdy board pages about a topic popular in most early-childhood curricula. One or two short sentences per page simply outline the process of growing apples: planting the seed, tending the seedling, nurturing the sapling, blossoming, pollination, harvest, and beyond. Proper scientific terms label illustrations of a cut apple and blossom. A series of numbered pictures show how a blossom becomes fruit. An added fact in a smaller font ("It takes two to three years for a seed to become a sapling") on each spread extends the usefulness of the book beyond the board-book audience. Some of the cheery illustrations may elicit more questions than can be answered by the text, however. There is no explanation as to why two children are staking the sapling, for instance. The children depicted are a multiracial mix, and several appear in more than one picture. All are included in the apple-picking scene, but that is not the end of the book. The next spreads show a truck being loaded to deliver apples to market, then children at a table eating foods made from apples, and finally an apple tree in all its stages with the adage "Good things are worth waiting for!" Useful when apple trees bloom and again during apple-picking season. (Board book. 2-4)

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