Take a bite out of fall with all things apple
Trees are changing colour, there’s a crispness in the air, and school groups are taking field trips to go apple- picking — the time is right for a picture book that’s bound to send you to the nearest farm or farmers market so you can stock up on some of the fruit yourself.
From Apple Trees to Cider, Please! features a rhyming text by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky about a little girl and her mother as they visit a farm and cider mill, and provides a taste of various apples — from Honeycrisp to Granny Smith and Golden Delicious. With a little red wagon in tow and their scruffy dog to keep them company, mother and daughter join various other families in the orchard. “Reaching up, we take our pick./ Twist and pluck them. That’s the trick.”
Colourful, cartoonish illustrations by Julia Patton follow the apple pickers from orchard to cider mill, where the apples are washed and loaded into a machine that shreds and crushes them into a mush that is poured into a press and turned into cider.
As our duo leaves the mill, having added several jugs of cider to the basket of apples in their little red wagon, they’re greeted by a lively festival on the farm site where they can take part in tractor rides, visit the animals in a petting zoo, and pick out a pumpkin in the pumpkin patch. The fall festivities are fuelled by all things apple: hot and cold cider, cobbler, fritters, pies, muffins and what turns out to be the little girl’s favourite treat: cider doughnuts.
If you can’t make it to a farm, at least take your youngster out for a walk among the trees and fall colours. Then stop at the market or grocery store, pick up a jug of apple juice, a bottle of cider and a few tasty apples, and curl up at home with this book as the two of you enjoy your snack.
The text is minimal, the rhyme is basic, and the images are designed more to entertain than inform, but the book offers a chance to celebrate the season — and to share time with your child and make a memory in the process.