Blog Entry #30

 

One Green Apple

By Eve Bunting

Illustrated by Ted Lewin

Clarion Books, 2006

32 pages

Multicultural

 

            One Green Apple is a very touching story that puts you in an immigrant’s shoes, after coming to America. This book is about a Muslim girl, named Farah, and she cannot speak English yet. This is her first day at school after arriving in America, and she goes on a field trip to an apple orchard with her class. She feels very odd, nervous, and out of place, and she cannot understand anything anyone is saying. She wears a dupatta over her head, women and girls wear them, and it is a custom in her country. She notices that no other girls wear them here. Some of the students have welcoming expressions and some do not, and Farah’s father explained that people from her country are not always well-liked in America. She recognizes some common factors throughout the day like laughter, smiling, and dogs barking. Farah makes a few friends and says her first English word out loud that day, apple.

            The illustrations in One Green Apple are done in watercolor. The paintings in this book look so real and so much like photographs. They are definitely done in a quality that could be hung on the living room wall and are very beautiful. One aspect a reader would notice about the illustrations is the shading of the light and darkness. It is easy to see where the light touches each page. There is use of bright colors, but it is done in a soft and subtle way. Some of the illustrations have negative space, using a muted color, to bring attention to the characters’ actions on the page. I really love the colors chosen, and the quality of the paintings in One Green Apple.

            One Green Apple is a second grade level book. I believe it would take at least a student in the second grade to understand how Farah felt and to recognize the underlying conflicts between American and Muslim cultures that affect her in the book. If I were a second grade teacher, I would read this book aloud to my students and make it available in the classroom library. For older grade levels, it could be used to spark a discussion or debate about the issues in America today that are mentioned in this book. It would be a great opportunity to teach about immigration or the Muslim culture. It provides a chance for students to connect to how they would feel if they were in a new place with people that spoke a totally different language from them. One Green Apple has no awards or honors.