APPLES TO OREGON

Johhny Appleseed would be proud of young Delicious and her family's efforts to take "Daddy's dainties" and "precious darlings" all the way to the sweet dirt of Oregon. Apple expressions, references, and imagery abound as this flamboyant family ventures across river and desert, surviving wind, hail, and frost with a wagonload of apple seedlings. Jessica Almasy's understated exaggeration underscores the tall-tale fun of this "daring adventure in fruit." She gives equal weight to Daddy's earnest pleas for Delicious's aid and the preposterous notions of a river "muddier than a cowboy's toenails" and the "nightly crooning to the Gravensteins." Be ready for some outrageous fun! A.R. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/ JUL 06]