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. (Reviewed August 2000)

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.

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 Maestro's How Do Apples Grow (1992), a Let's-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)

PreS-Gr 2-In her characteristic, easily understood, and straightforward style, Gibbons gives an overview of apples. She traces their history in America, shows their parts, and explains their growth, harvest, and uses. Three pages illustrate many different varieties, and a concluding page lists interesting facts. Betsy Maestro's How Do Apples Grow? (HarperCollins, 1992) delves more thoroughly into the fertilization and growth of the fruit as does Bruce McMillan's Apples, How They Grow (Houghton, 1979; o.p.). Dorothy Hinshaw Patent's Apple Trees (Lerner, 1997) is more complex as is Charles Micucci's The Life and Times of the Apple (Orchard, 1992). Gibbons's own The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree (Harcourt, 1984) has some of the same information found here. The recipe for apple pie is essentially the same, and both have a diagram of a cider press. However, the focus of the two books is very different. With its cheerful, bright illustrations and clear, simple presentation, this title will be the perfect pick for the perennial fall apple-book requests.-Louise L. Sherman, formerly at Anna C. Scott School, Leonia, NJ Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.