Bring Me Some Apples and I'll Make You a Pie: A Story About Edna Lewis (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 1–3—Edna Lewis was an African-American chef in New York City when neither women nor African Americans were generally in such positions. This story is loosely based on her childhood in rural Virginia where her family lived off the land. It was that upbringing that helped create the celebrated chef who understood the importance of fresh ingredients in her cooking. While young children may not understand about fresh ingredients and a career in cooking, they will enjoy learning about where the food they eat comes from. Gourley follows her character through the growing season, starting in early spring and ending with the autumn frost. The fruits, the berries, and the nuts they pick are all used in the meals the family eats, with the surplus being canned and preserved for the winter months. Gourley's luscious watercolors will have readers salivating as the berries plunk into pails and peach juice drips down chins. The story itself does run a little long for young listeners but the short ditties the children sing about what they are picking help to liven it up. Pair this title with Donald Hall's Ox-Cart Man (Penguin, 1979) to show children the rhythm of the seasons and a time when we were much more connected to the basics of life.—Joan Kindig, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA
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From Booklist

Edna Lewis, the granddaughter of an emancipated slave who founded Freetown, Virginia, grew up to become a famous chef of southern cuisine. Inspired by Lewis’ childhood, this debut children’s book by an artist and cookbook author celebrates the growing seasons and the irreplaceable pleasure of fresh food shared with family. From spring’s wild strawberries to deep summer’s tangy tomatoes and fall’s harvest of nuts, each season brings a new delight on the Lewis family farm, and while young Edna helps harvest the crops, she dreams about what to make with each tantalizing new ingredient: strawberry shortcake, watermelon pickles, nut-butter cookies. Gourley’s colloquial words evoke the rhythms of southern speech, while frequent rhymes, spoken in the multiple voices of family members, increase the folksy flavor. Watercolors in bright, juicy colors echo the story’s themes of abundance in lush scenes of the fresh fruits and vegetables, the well-stocked pantry, and the African American family working and then dining together. A final biographical section about Lewis includes several southern, kid-friendly recipes. Grades K-3. --Gillian Engberg

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4-8
  
• Hardcover: 48 pages
• Publisher: Clarion Books (June 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618158367
• ISBN-13: 978-0618158362
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #338,870 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bake Chef Edna's Nut-Butter Squares and read this book!, March 22, 2009

By	D. Fowler "Dragonfly77" (Vermont) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Edna Lewis' grandfather, a former slave, established Freetown, Virginia where all the little boys and girls could grow up free and enjoy life and nature as it should be. When the whippoorwill sang its song it meant it was time to get up and enjoy the onset of spring. Edna would learn about food for the soul and food for life with the seasons. Every season brought with it some special saying and food. Indeed, the lessons became so ingrained in her she became a very famous chef! In fact she was one of the very first African-American chefs.

`Most everyone had special things to say about food and the seasons. Her Daddy said:

"Sassafras heals what ails you.
Sassafras makes you feel all right.
Drink the tea in the morning
and sleep all night."

I loved the poetic lilt of the text and its complimentary watercolors. The reader will find a brief biography and photograph of the "real" Chef Edna Lewis in the back of the book followed by a few of Edna's original recipes. It would be lots of fun to make her Nut-Butter squares and read this adorable book!

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's PIcks: BRING ME SOME APPLES AND I'LL MAKE YOU A PIE, February 22, 2009

By	Richie Partington "http://richiespicks.com" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Start at the bottom and you pick 'em from the ground
And you pick the tree clean all the way around;
Then you set up your ladder and you climb up high
And you're looking through the leaves at the clear blue sky."
-- Larry Hanks, "Apple Picker's Reel"

Today is one of those days that cannot make up its mind. It was raining earlier this morning here in Sebastopol, and it remains rather chilly, but out of the upstairs skylight there are now glimpses of sun playing hide and seek behind the cover of white and gray clouds. The snow level last night was reportedly down to 2,000 feet, but the clouds are still blocking the mountains twenty miles to the east where snow might actually become visible this afternoon -- unless the view from my hillside remains obscured by low clouds and more rain.

It is a welcome day off, and I'm sitting here in solitude and flannel, dreaming of longer, warmer days to come.

"'Peaches!' Auntie sighs. 'Pure as angels. Sweet as love.'"

Those days are coming. Literally, in the time it has taken me to write this much, there are suddenly twice as many pink and white blossoms open on the plum trees outside my upstairs window than there were an hour ago. In just a few months I will be outside picking achingly sweet, perfect plums.

I planted those plum trees a decade ago, along with peaches and persimmons and apples and cherries and pears. I also planted an olive tree and a walnut tree. The old-fashioned seeded table grapes along a fence and the swarms of boysenberry brambles out front were already thriving for a generation or more by time I moved here in '86. There are also scattered blackberry brambles along my long, rutted driveway.

"'We're rich as kings as long as we have beans,' says Mama."

I have no discipline for growing vegetables. It is true that I persuaded myself to go milk the goats twice a day for an entire quarter century before happily abandoning that practice in favor of library school. But the every-day go-out-and-plant, go-out-and-weed, go-out-and-water routine is one that I don't think I will ever be able to deal with.

In contrast, when you plant fruit trees, you have a big initial project to complete, followed by a couple of summers of periodic watering while they become established. Then it's just the annual pruning to take care of. I get to spend my spare time reading instead of weeding.

"Sister says, 'One for the basket and one to taste.'"

The cover of BRING ME SOME APPLES AND I'LL MAKE YOU A PIE certainly speaks to me on this chilly winter morning of the first plum blossoms. The depiction of young Edna Lewis holding an apple gets me thinking about the crop for which Sebastopol was long known when I moved out here: the Gravenstein apple. I never thought that there could be an apple better tasting than the Macintoshes that I grew up eating and making into pies as a child back east, but the early-ripening Gravensteins are absolutely heaven to bite into on a lazy July or August afternoon.

"'You can never have too much summer,' says Edna."

Robbin Gourley's watercolor illustrations in BRING ME SOME APPLES depict Edna and her family working and having fun together. With young Edna frequently taking the lead, they pick, prepare, and preserve all sorts of fruits, greens, nuts, berries, roots, and vegetables through the seasons of a year. We are also brought images of the birds, the bunnies, and the bees; the dog, the chickens, the plow horse, (OH, And don't forget the snakes hiding in the brambles who "like the berries, too.").

What in the world can better connect you to the joy of seasons past than biting into the perfect strawberry that you've just discovered hiding in the midst of a berry patch? In this celebration of the seasons as seen from the childhood of the late, noted Black restaurateur and Southern cookbook author Edna Lewis, young readers get tuned into where good food really comes from. In an age when numerous and rampant childhood health issues stem from their eating fast food and chugging swill that promises to make one "party like a rock star," I sure love a story that reminds me of the long-ago preschooler I once was, who'd love spending an afternoon climbing and foraging in the backyard apple tree and then baking a pie with Mom.