Pomona's Pick: Apples by Jacqueline Farmer

Author and illustrator Farmer and Tildes have collaborated on a book about America's favorite fruit which looks good enough to eat all by itself. With a jolly still life of a variety of apples on the front and a rustic bushel basket spilling its various apples invitingly on the back, this delicious nonfiction book is as hard not to pick up and sample as its subject.

Accompanied by soft and cheery drawings, the text clearly covers the science and craft of apple culture, including grafting techniques commonly used to cultivate market apples, tree care to ensure growth and full fruiting, the reproductive parts of the blossom and the role pollinators play in producing the development of fruit, and the ongoing cultivation which produces a bountiful harvest of this popular food.

Farmer also includes a table of the eight most popular apples--Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Gala, Fuji, McIntosh, Pink Lady, and Rome--which describes their flavor and uses. She also explains the difference between cider and apple juice and how to store and eat apples to get the maximum nutritional punch from the package.

My favorite section covers the history of apples, from their original cultivation in the Middle East, their refinement by the Greeks and Romans (Pomona was the Roman goddess of tree fruits) and the role apples have played in legend and symbolism. A version of the Old English aepple (originally the word for any tree fruit), the term is now applied only to the hundreds of varieties of the heritage and modern apple. Apples are closely bound up with American history, being planted by the Massachusetts colonists, who also imported European honeybees to pollinate them, by 1629. Farmer also tells how the real "Johnny Appleseed", John Chapman, and the Oregon Trail pioneers carried apple seedlings to plant all along their westward journeys.

Along with a traditional recipe for apple pie, Farmer's appendix, Apple Facts and Records, has some interesting surprises. For example, apples are 25 per cent air, which makes them float conveniently so that we (and earlier courting couples) can bob for them at fall parties. Another surprising fact--China is the world's leading apple grower, with 41 per cent of the world's crop. And who knew that Native Americans called the Pilgrim's apple-blossom-loving honeybees "white man's flies?"

For solid information for classroom units on botany, food products, or seasonal activities or as a tasty "snack" for young readers, this is one of the best books about apples around. For autumn story time or units, pair Apples with the author's Pumpkins and, for a slightly younger audience, Gail Gibbons' Apples for a seasonal treat. For an imaginative take on apple growing, join it with the Lauren Thompson's noted The Apple Pie That Papa Baked, reviewed here in my post of November 6, 2007.