Sour Apple

PreS-Gr 4–Whether it’s third grade dodgeball teams or lining up to organize classroom celebrations or even just dance class, no one wants to be picked last. Readers will universally identify with the double-wide green apple who narrates: “I am an apple./ Today is the start of the season./ When every apple’s life finds a reason./ It’s the day when apples get picked from their tree . . ./ . . . everyone EXCEPT ME.” This is painful enough, but the narrator spells out the grief in bold letters: “Why did they not pick me?” Children will be hooked. This is the keening, this is the quest, the great why of childhood, and this apple spells it out. Liu’s splendid Hidden Gem took on life’s truths from a rockier angle, but this book, in autumnal shades that appear to be stained glass or perhaps torn tissue paper layered to heady textures, takes on Snow White and Sir Isaac Newton, adages (“bad seed,” “keep the doctor away,” “apple of your eye”), recipes, and—nihilism. Educators are free to elucidate every single spread or gloss over what they will, but the creator of this book has taken everything to its essential, ultimate ending. In fact, this bad seed: Not shiny enough? Not tiny enough? The list of why and why not goes on, but the delivery nibbled on, stomped on, finishing last, falls into the deep dark ground and becomes a tree. This book is a showstopper. Every line is a philosophical question or a plunge into science or popular culture.