13 February 2009 BRING ME SOME APPLES AND I'LL MAKE YOU A PIE: A STORY ABOUT EDNA LEWIS by Robbin Gourley, Clarion, 48p., January 2009, ISBN: 978-0-618-15836-2

"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.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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