One Green Apple

Farah feels alone, even when surrounded by her classmates. She listens and nods but doesn’t speak. It’s hard being the new kid in school, especially when you’re from another country and don’t know the language. Then, on a field trip to an apple orchard, Farah discovers there are lots of things that sound the same as they did at home, from dogs crunching their food to the ripple of friendly laughter. As she helps the class make apple cider, Farah connects with the other students and begins to feel that she belongs.

Ted Lewin’s gorgeous sun-drenched paintings and Eve Bunting’s sensitive text immediately put the reader into another child’s shoes in this timely story of a young Muslim immigrant.

Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz - Children's Literature

Farah begins her story on her second day in her new school in her new country. Many things are strange to her, including the clothes and the language. Her class is going on a field trip to an apple orchard, where they each pick an apple to be made into cider. Symbolically, Farah drops her small green one into the machine, to be incorporated with all the other red ones. She begins to make friends. She has also learned a new word, "App-ell." She has hope that "There will be more." Her simple story helps us understand the feelings of one of the many immigrant children striving to make their way in our American world. Lewin's naturalistic watercolors take advantage of the large double pages to depict the apple picking adventure, including the efforts of some children toward friendship. His visual narrative is successful in pulling us along, while presenting genuine personalities, particularly Farah herself. In her final full page portrait, her smile seems to predict a positive future. 2006, Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Company, Ages 4 to 8.

Ted Lewin grew up in Buffalo, New York, with two brothers, one sister, two parents, a lion, an iguana, and a chimpanzee. He became interested in art as a young boy when he would draw his brothers' world of wrestling. Ted later worked as a professional wrestler to finance his studies at the Pratt Institute of Fine Arts, where he met his wife, Betsy Lewin, also a children's book writer and illustrator. He and his wife travel around the world to research the settings for their books. While working on SACRED RIVER, which he both wrote and illustrated, Ted joined thousands of Hindus on their pilgrimage to the banks of the Ganges River in Benares, India. Ted now lives and works in the brownstone he shares with his wife and their two cats in Brooklyn, New York. For more information visit www.tedlewin.com.