FAMILY TRAVEL

Destination: The World

Book: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman (Ages 3-7)

Article by Jennifer Close

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World  by Marjorie Priceman is a whimsical children’s picture book that takes you on a journey around the world to gather ingredients for an apple pie. The main character decides that she is going to make an apple pie but unfortunately the market is closed. Rather than wait for the market to open, she decides to pack a suitcase and catch a steamship to Europe.

While in Europe, she stops by Italy to gather some wheat and France to pick up a chicken. Then she heads to Sri Lanka to pick up the bark of a kurundu tree so she can get some cinnamon. While in England, she picks up a cow for the freshest milk possible. The journey continues through Jamaica and her last stop before home is an apple orchard in Vermont.

When she gets home, she has to make the flour, cinnamon and salt as well as milk the cow and get the chicken to lay an egg. Once she has all of her ingredients, she makes her delicious apple pie and has friends over to help eat it.

My favorite part of the picture book was when she hopped the train to France to locate a chicken. I liked the way the drawings capture the hustle and bustle of a European train station. The book is full of fun and fancy. It is quite unrealistic but children will love the bright colors and the drawings. The places that you can visit together while you read the book will certainly spark the wanderlust. My daughter is already asking why we haven’t hopped a train to France!

The story concludes with a made-from-scratch apple pie recipe that uses just a handful of ingredients.

If you like How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, check out How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A by the same author, who is both author and illustrator with many books to her credit, both as illustrator of other authors work and her own. Zin,Zin, the Violin, that Priceman illustrated and  Hot Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Balloon Ride, which she both wrote and illustrated each won Caldecott honors.