The Last Apple Tree
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Junior Library Guild Selection How I Came to Write This Book A few years ago, I saw an article in a University of Colorado newsletter about the Boulder Apple Tree Project, which is devoted to locating and preserving the county’s vanishing heirloom apple trees – one-of-a-kind trees whose genetic heritage is in danger of being lost forever. Ooh! I have a weakness for people who try to save things, especially things that many people don’t know or care about. The Boulder Apple Tree Project is also collecting and preserving stories about these trees. Ooh! I love stories! In fact, I write stories! I found myself groping toward ideas for a book about an heirloom apple tree and the two seventh graders, a boy and a girl, who uncover its secrets when they interview her grandfather for a school oral history project. My previous middle-grade novel was written in verse, and I wanted to do something different this time, but I do love writing poetry, so the book, written in prose, also contains poems throughout from the point of view of the old apple tree, and all it remembers. Published: 2024 |
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Reviews: Sonnet and her younger sister, Villanelle, move with their single mother from Colorado to live with their maternal grandfather in Indiana. Anderson Granger is struggling to process his wife’s recent death and is showing worrying signs of forgetfulness. Twelve-year-old Sonnet always wondered why they rarely visited Gramps and Nana, but Mom avoided answering her questions. Meanwhile, neighbor boy Zeke Morrison feels disconnected from his environmental journalist father. Zeke’s vegan family eschews technology, which he finds frustrating. After years of home schooling, Zeke just wants to fit in at the local middle school. Both Sonnet and Zeke choose Anderson Granger as the subject of their seventh grade oral history project (much to Sonnet’s annoyance). Initially unwilling partners, they grow closer as they work together, and their interviews reveal the secret behind Sonnet’s mom’s family estrangement. The mystery in this deftly characterized novel unravels from three different points of view—those of Sonnet, Zeke, and an old apple tree that witnessed the whole story. The personified apple tree, the last one standing in the orchard, faithfully interprets the family’s story in moving poems that are interspersed throughout the novel. The tree’s relationship with the family opens Zeke’s eyes to the deep connection between humans and the natural world, helping to heal his relationship with his father. . . A touching homage to the healing of old wounds and family relationships. – Kirkus – STARRED REVIEW Mills (The Lost Language) centers characters navigating personal changes against a potent backdrop of tree conservation in this emotionally authentic novel. Until recently, seventh grader Zeke has been homeschooled by his idealistic vegan parents, who don’t allow him anything “normal,” such as a cellphone, video games, or television. Indiana newcomer Sonnet, also in seventh grade, arrives from Colorado with her poet mother and lively, imaginative five-year-old sister to live with her widowed grandfather. Gramps is struggling without his soulmate, to whom he proposed in the apple orchard he had to sell, which became the subdivision where Zeke lives. Only one aging apple tree—the focal point of past events and of the narrative’s well-constructed momentum—remains. When Zeke and Sonnet interview Gramps for an oral history project, Zeke inadvertently derails Sonnet’s mission to keep Gramps’s grief at bay, and unearths a buried family tragedy. Meanwhile, Sonnet’s participation in the school’s Green Club threatens to reveal Zeke’s “weirdo” father’s environmental activism. Moving, interspersed poems, though extraneous to the plot, pay homage to a motif of trees’ capacity to feel. – Publishers Weekly Seventh-graders Sonnet and Zeke may be neighbors, but they don’t really know each other until each chooses to interview Sonnet’s grandfather for an oral history project. Sonnet is fiercely protective of Gramps, whose wife died earlier in the year. Gramps, who responds to all their questions, perks up when answering Zeke’s, perhaps because the boy listens well and asks good follow-up questions. Meanwhile, Sonnet joins the Green Club and agrees to ask the local “tree hugger,” (Zeke’s dad) to speak on Arbor Day. Now Zeke is miserable. Homeschooled until this year, he had hoped to find friends at school, but that’s not going well, and having his very opinionated father lecture the student body is a painful prospect. With this and other examples of realistic middle-school concerns, the inviting third-person narrative shuttles back and forth between Zeke’s viewpoint and Sonnet’s, presenting the story from their very different perspectives before arriving at mutual understanding and a genuine alliance. Mills' imaginative story, amusing details, and true-to-life portrayals of characters and their emotions light up this enjoyable chapter book. — Carolyn Phelan – Booklist Sharing narration, Sonnet and Zeke have compellingly distinct voices, and their emotions—set roiling by frustration, embarrassment, and anger—are believably conveyed and palpably felt. Sonnet’s chapters are marked by understandable anxiety as she attempts to control new family dynamics in a completely new environment, and Zeke is as furious with his father as he is desperate for the man’s affection. [S]everal chapters from the perspective of the old apple tree remind readers of a larger picture of life and happiness, and of growth and rebirth amidst trauma and tragedy. – Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Seventh graders Sonnet and Zeke are neighbors who hardly know each other. Even the few well-intended interactions they have dissolve into misunderstanding. Both are lonely and struggle with complicated situations at home. Sonnet and her lively little sister, Villanelle, have just moved to town with their mom to live with their grandfather after their grandmother’s death. Sonnet spends considerable energy trying to keep everyone from feeling the sadness permeating their home. Meanwhile, after years of homeschooling with his zealous, overbearing father, Zeke has started public school, where he feels self-conscious about his lack of a cellphone, television, or video game console. Told in third person with alternating perspectives, the story allows readers to see how Sonnet and Zeke feel inside compared with the effect their words and actions have. Sonnet’s mother is a poet, and interspersed throughout are contextual poems from the perspective of the last apple tree on the property of Sonnet’s grandfather. Trees, and this tree in particular, play a pivotal role in the past, present, and future of the characters and their emotional well-being. Each complex and well-meaning character suffers personal challenges and tragedies on their own, which leads to confusion, dishonesty, and further isolation. As tensions build, the characters are cornered into finally being true to one another, and they discover understanding, compassion, and release. – Horn Book |