Customer Reviews

Applesauce Season

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What do you get when you combine access to farmers' markets with an old family tradition of slicing, cooking, and mashing? Different varieties of delicious applesauce, that's what. A young child's family is fortunate enough to indulge its taste for fresh apples in the city's various farmers' markets, where every few weeks the apples sold change in color and taste: MacIntosh, Macoun, Winesap, and Mutsu, to name just a few. Everyone in the family helps in some way in cooking up scrumptious batches of applesauce and dishes made with applesauce.

This engaging story offers an excellent opportunity to talk with young learners about some basic concepts in economics, including natural resources and markets. Particularly important is the role of farmers' markets in helping urban residents to meet their needs for fresh fruits and vegetables, a point emphasized in both the text and illustrations.

What a great lasting posthumous tribute to Ms. Lipson, the book's author. The family works together to make its annual batch of apple sauce in the city. A bespeckled boy heads to the farmers' market to get various types of apples. He helps his grandmother and family make the sauce. His mother cuts the apples in quarters, his grandmother in sixths, and thus traditions are passed down. The book includes a great recipe at the end, and the boy wonders if he will like sauce or pie when he grows older. Now, where can I get some winesaps and jonagolds and a food grinder?

I love reading this book to my children. They love learning apple variety names. We now make applesauce regularly and the kids participate based on what they have learned in the book. A must have in any chilren's home library.

The streets are busy with children, but soon it will be time to go back to school. About this time Grandma says, "It's time for applesauce." There are apples that are ready earlier, but it is the peak season for other fruits and the best time to eat them. The city is lively and there are no apple trees, but there are markets where bushels of them await families who want to make applesauce. A little boy tugs his little dog toward the apples, but Grandma is already choosing six pounds she will need for the sauce. At summer's end there can be found Ida Red, Paul Red Macintosh, Twenty Ounce and Ginger Gold. Later others will come.

At home the apples are "dumped in the kitchen sink and washed." The boy stands on a stepladder, washes them carefully and hands them to his mother. Grandma had selected three different kinds for "real flavor." The apples are handed down the line. His mother cuts them in quarters, hands them to Grandma and she cuts them in sixths. That's just the way it is done. Then into the pot, seeds and all, they go. Water is added and soon they will be "soft and bubbly and start to smell good." Mmmmmmm! Cinnamon sugar, a food mill and lots of love will go into making this special sauce that changes as the weeks go by!

Whether you live in the city or the country, family food traditions make for very special times. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this family make applesauce from the selection of the apples at the farmer's market to placing the finished product on the table. The artwork was charming and all the smiling faces meshed perfectly with the tale. In the end pages there are illustrations of the family and an assortment of apples, each with a name beneath. In the back of the book is the recipe for the applesauce made in the book. This would be a perfect book to read during an apple season. It will be hard to resist trying out the recipe in this book!

This cozy picture book describes how a family makes applesauce one fall: washing the apples, cutting them up, cooking them on the stove, putting the warm cooked apples through a food mill. There is a wonderful picture of everyone standing over the stove and smelling the applesauce as it cooks. The inside cover pages picture different types of apples and a recipe for apple sauce is included.

Strong families are tied together by habits and traditions, and one important tradition is food we share. This book commemorates one family's practice, year after year, of making applesauce throughout the Fall season. A child narrator explains the process of how the family makes applesauce. He enthusiastically describes different varieties of apples they find at their local farm market, and explains how the applesauce changes throughout the season as apple varieties ripen for the family's ongoing "harvest."

The applesauce tradition includes three generations, opening with a quote from Grandmother explaining why the family eats other fruit at the beginning of apple season. It closes with an intimate scene of the family remembering their deceased Grandfather by eating apple pie on his birthday. The young narrator says Grandfather liked to eat leftover apple pie with sharp cheese on the next morning, and wonders if he will prefer that when he is grown up. In this way the three generations are brought together with a secure sense of generational continuity through their shared food.

Lipson's prose is exceptionally well crafted, and Gerstein has joyfully illustrated each scene with colorful, interesting pictures. Some readers may find the book a little sentimental, but even if its mood doesn't particularly appeal to your family, the book is worthwhile for its educational value and cooking instruction. It's probably best for an elementary audience.

Delightful, realistic story with familiar and lovable (Jewish) stereotypes that revived personal family memories for me. I bought it for my son and his family,hoping that the traditions of applesauce (& apple pie) would be enjoyed and passed on for yet more generations.
Excellent illustrations and layout, as always,thanks to Mordecai Gerstein.