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The Story of Appleby Capple
Newbery medal Honor book (1951)
For his cousin Clements 99th birthday, five year old Appleby is determined to give the old man the thing he wants most to see: a zebra butterfly. the boy wanders through the alphabet looking for the butterfly. Ink illustrations work people and objects around all 26 letters.
For his cousin Clements 99th birthday, five year old Appleby is determined to give the old man the thing he wants most to see: a zebra butterfly. the boy wanders through the alphabet looking for the butterfly. Ink illustrations work people and objects around all 26 letters.
184 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1950
About the author
Anne Parrish
43 books4 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Three-time Newbery Honor winner, Anne Parrish came from a distinguished and artistic Philadelphia family. Her younger brother was author Dillwyn Parrish. Parrish trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, although she later chose a career in literature. In 1923 her first romantic novel, Pocketful of Poses, was published simultaneously to her children's book, Knee-High to a Grasshopper, illustrated by her brother Dillwyn. Their collaboration was followed by 'Lustres' (1924). In 1925 'The Perennial Bachelor' was the eighth best-selling book for the entire year according to the New York Times and won the Harper Prize from her publisher. Her 1928 bestseller 'All Kneeling' was made into the 1950 film Born to Be Bad, starring Joan Fontaine and Robert Ryan.
Throughout most of her life, Anne Parrish traveled extensively and on a trip to Switzerland, she and her brother purchased Le Paquis, a cottage in a meadow overlooking Lake Geneva not far from Lausanne, between Vevey and Chexbres.
In 1915, she married industrialist Charles Albert Corliss, residing in New York City. Her husband died in 1936. Two years later, she married poet and novelist Josiah Titzell (aka Frederick Lambeck). They made their home in Redding, Connecticut. After he died in 1943, she continued to live there for the rest of her life.
Three-time Newbery Honor winner, Anne Parrish came from a distinguished and artistic Philadelphia family. Her younger brother was author Dillwyn Parrish. Parrish trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, although she later chose a career in literature. In 1923 her first romantic novel, Pocketful of Poses, was published simultaneously to her children's book, Knee-High to a Grasshopper, illustrated by her brother Dillwyn. Their collaboration was followed by 'Lustres' (1924). In 1925 'The Perennial Bachelor' was the eighth best-selling book for the entire year according to the New York Times and won the Harper Prize from her publisher. Her 1928 bestseller 'All Kneeling' was made into the 1950 film Born to Be Bad, starring Joan Fontaine and Robert Ryan.
Throughout most of her life, Anne Parrish traveled extensively and on a trip to Switzerland, she and her brother purchased Le Paquis, a cottage in a meadow overlooking Lake Geneva not far from Lausanne, between Vevey and Chexbres.
In 1915, she married industrialist Charles Albert Corliss, residing in New York City. Her husband died in 1936. Two years later, she married poet and novelist Josiah Titzell (aka Frederick Lambeck). They made their home in Redding, Connecticut. After he died in 1943, she continued to live there for the rest of her life.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 20, 2023
Unfortunately, this was tedious: nearly 200 pages of alliterative repetitive narrative. Some others have advocated reading aloud, but I could not possibly stomach devoting the time required to this, considering how many other more worthy books are out there.
There were many bits that had charm and cleverness, but I kept wishing that there were something more to it - if there had been some kind of hidden secret to be discovered by the reader through a series of clues, that might have made it more palatable. The ending discovery for the characters, revealed in the final Z chapter, was so very predictable for the reader - and thus so very underwhelming.
Three stars is perhaps being generous, but despite the tedium, it's not all bad. I disagree with other reviewers who claim racism, colonialism, etc. It's intended as a silly book, and it succeeds in that aim. I am curious, though, how this odd book got so much attention that it ended up as a Newbery runner-up. This was the third Newbery accolade for Parrish, with her first being in 1924, so maybe it was a sense of honoring the old veteran. I have to think it was an unusual year - the winner and all the other runners-up were biographies (mostly in the social reform realm, then and now a favorite of librarians). This was the *only* non-biography. I'd be interested to peruse Horn Book, Kirkus, and other review sources to see what was being praised in 1950. I guess it should also be considered that C. S. Lewis published The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this same year (UK ineligible for Newbery, of course).
Oddity: on the jacket, this book is claimed to be Parrish's *second* book for children, when it is obviously her third - The Dream Coach (1924), Floating Island (1930), and this. This book says Floating Island was her first juvenile book. Huh? I sympathize with publisher Harper since Dream Coach was published by competitor Macmillan, but why the need to erase it and revise history, especially since what is being erased isn't some work of no significance, but rather another Newbery runner-up?
The illustrations are all of one cloth - nice but so much (59, apparently) of the same. I could imagine someone like Alan Aldridge or Graeme Base doing a more interesting job (and avoiding the embedding of the alphabet letters into the figures). The picture captions are just more of the same as the text - paragraph-long and simply retelling what has already been stated. There are no hidden images in the illustrations to keep the reader's attention - everything is named and spelled out to make sure you haven't overlooked anything. I longed for some Hirschfeld Ninas. The cover and endpapers add green and red to the black and white, which is nice, but made me wish for everything to have the vibrant hues of the original printings of Seven Simeons: A Russian Tale.
A thought - I wonder if one could create a good 32-page picture book by pulling the endpapers, the illustrations, the captions, and the little four-line rhymes that begin each chapter. Probably not. Oh well.
There were many bits that had charm and cleverness, but I kept wishing that there were something more to it - if there had been some kind of hidden secret to be discovered by the reader through a series of clues, that might have made it more palatable. The ending discovery for the characters, revealed in the final Z chapter, was so very predictable for the reader - and thus so very underwhelming.
Three stars is perhaps being generous, but despite the tedium, it's not all bad. I disagree with other reviewers who claim racism, colonialism, etc. It's intended as a silly book, and it succeeds in that aim. I am curious, though, how this odd book got so much attention that it ended up as a Newbery runner-up. This was the third Newbery accolade for Parrish, with her first being in 1924, so maybe it was a sense of honoring the old veteran. I have to think it was an unusual year - the winner and all the other runners-up were biographies (mostly in the social reform realm, then and now a favorite of librarians). This was the *only* non-biography. I'd be interested to peruse Horn Book, Kirkus, and other review sources to see what was being praised in 1950. I guess it should also be considered that C. S. Lewis published The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this same year (UK ineligible for Newbery, of course).
Oddity: on the jacket, this book is claimed to be Parrish's *second* book for children, when it is obviously her third - The Dream Coach (1924), Floating Island (1930), and this. This book says Floating Island was her first juvenile book. Huh? I sympathize with publisher Harper since Dream Coach was published by competitor Macmillan, but why the need to erase it and revise history, especially since what is being erased isn't some work of no significance, but rather another Newbery runner-up?
The illustrations are all of one cloth - nice but so much (59, apparently) of the same. I could imagine someone like Alan Aldridge or Graeme Base doing a more interesting job (and avoiding the embedding of the alphabet letters into the figures). The picture captions are just more of the same as the text - paragraph-long and simply retelling what has already been stated. There are no hidden images in the illustrations to keep the reader's attention - everything is named and spelled out to make sure you haven't overlooked anything. I longed for some Hirschfeld Ninas. The cover and endpapers add green and red to the black and white, which is nice, but made me wish for everything to have the vibrant hues of the original printings of Seven Simeons: A Russian Tale.
A thought - I wonder if one could create a good 32-page picture book by pulling the endpapers, the illustrations, the captions, and the little four-line rhymes that begin each chapter. Probably not. Oh well.
March 28, 2016
(Note from your reviewer: I usually avoid giving ratings to reviews of books I couldn't get through, but this thing is so genuinely bad and racially insensitive that I feel like I HAVE to warn people away from it.)
Ladies and gentlemen, there are a great number of old Newbery Honor books that have faded into obscurity. Some of them are actually pretty good, too! The Winged Girl of Knossos has a pretty big following among the five people who've read it, for one, and I rather enjoyed The Secret River (despite it being so cutesy at times that writers of Barbie movie novelizations would find it a touch too saccharine). So, generally, I don't have a lot of trepidation when approaching an old book with a shiny silver sticker on it.
After reading 21% of The Story of Appleby Capple, though, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to rethink that, because this may have been the worst thing I've ever read that didn't start as fanfiction of something. Just HOW bad was the children's publishing year of 1950 if this thing was considered one of the top five books?
So, the plot: Appleby is boy with a dumb name (though as the weirdly intrusive narrator says on the first page, not a name as dumb as Choke-Cherry or something, because THAT'S important and plot-relevant). He's going to go find his extremely old cousin a Zebra butterfly for his 99th birthday. It doesn't go all that well. People freak out. Animals are everywhere, as are extraordinarily offensive stereotypes of Native Americans. Hilarity, apparently, is to ensue.
There are exactly two reasons why you should ever consider reading this:
1. You have a serious fetish for alliteration, in that all alliteration always seems appropriately awesome and accessible. (No matter how shoehorned in it is, because seriously, this book does more shoehorning than a freaking Payless model!)
or
2. You REALLY want to read every Newbery Medalist or Honor book, even the really terrible ones that will make you question your life choices.
The illustrations are lovely, sure, but they do NOT require reading the text, so if you ever get a hold of this book, just look at the illustrations and pretend the text never happened.
Perhaps, you may think, Kim is being too hard on this little book, this old book that only serious kidlit aficionados have any awareness of. This book that she didn't even finish! Please note that I have only ever marked one book as DNF before this one. I stick out terrible things far more often than I'd like to admit, but this book was painful and showed no signs of getting any better.
Reason 1: The voice. All forced whimsy and quirk, significant of nothing. I am entirely certain I have never read a book told in a more painful style than this. It flips from past-tense to present-tense with all of the coherence of a rambling drunk. The narrator breaks the fourth wall because... she can? And, again, alliteration. Painfully pointless alliteration. It's impossible to figure out which part of the 6-12 age group it's aimed at, considering it talks to the audience as if they are profoundly unintelligent four-year-olds. I swear it was sentient and personally thought I was stupid, that's how bad it was. I have no idea where the story was going, because it kept going off to explore the psyches and backstories of all these ridiculously precious adult characters who are SO CONCERNED about where this profoundly uninteresting protagonist ran off to. (If you're so concerned, go FIND HIM!)
Admittedly, exploring the mental state of the caterpillar was kind of cute. I have a major weakness for caterpillars, though, so that's not really a plus in the book's camp.
Reason 2: Holy unbelievable racism, Batman! Those of us well-versed in children's literature are aware that many, many, many, many old children's books have no great shortage of offensive stereotypes. Even so, there comes a point where your alarm sounds so loudly that you have to take a look at what you're reading and say, "What the hell?" There is a depiction of a Native American character that is so offensively brutish and animalistic that it honestly pained me to read his sections of the "plot," and there's a completely bizarre tangent about a Chinese decoration that is both completely pointless and horrifically stereotypical. I've seen episodes of Family Guy with more racial sensitivity than this book. I'm not going to chalk it up to being a product of its time. That robs the author of the book of her responsibility in creating something like this. A huge part of why I stopped reading was because I really, really didn't want to see just how much more offensive it could get. I could tell that it was going to get worse.
Reason 3: Being called "distinguished" in the history books will only get you so far. There's no way in telling what will age well and what will not, and I don't believe it's the responsibility of the yearly Newbery committees to figure that out, personally. Still, when we look back on the shiny sticker parade, there are going to be things we can reasonably refer to as "mistakes." And, oh boy, is this one of 'em. In my estimation, there is nothing distinguished here text-wise, in any positive sense. The characters barely register as existent, save for the animals. The writing, as said above, is atrocious and insulting. The plot rambles. The theme, which is the alphabet, is pulled off well only in that there definitely are lots of letters in this book. In short, it's very hard to see what makes this book special, and not at all hard to see why it's obscure and out of print.
I never complain about whether or not a kid would willingly pick up a book if it's won an award, but this is a book that I think maybe two currently existing children would ever willingly gravitate to, and I'm fairly certain it would fail to captivate them as well.
Perhaps the remaining 79% of the book that I avoided like the plague is a riveting masterpiece of suspense and beautiful writing, but judging by what preceded it, I sincerely doubt that. An apple a day keeps the doctor away; what do I have to do to keep Appleby Capple away?
Ladies and gentlemen, there are a great number of old Newbery Honor books that have faded into obscurity. Some of them are actually pretty good, too! The Winged Girl of Knossos has a pretty big following among the five people who've read it, for one, and I rather enjoyed The Secret River (despite it being so cutesy at times that writers of Barbie movie novelizations would find it a touch too saccharine). So, generally, I don't have a lot of trepidation when approaching an old book with a shiny silver sticker on it.
After reading 21% of The Story of Appleby Capple, though, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to rethink that, because this may have been the worst thing I've ever read that didn't start as fanfiction of something. Just HOW bad was the children's publishing year of 1950 if this thing was considered one of the top five books?
So, the plot: Appleby is boy with a dumb name (though as the weirdly intrusive narrator says on the first page, not a name as dumb as Choke-Cherry or something, because THAT'S important and plot-relevant). He's going to go find his extremely old cousin a Zebra butterfly for his 99th birthday. It doesn't go all that well. People freak out. Animals are everywhere, as are extraordinarily offensive stereotypes of Native Americans. Hilarity, apparently, is to ensue.
There are exactly two reasons why you should ever consider reading this:
1. You have a serious fetish for alliteration, in that all alliteration always seems appropriately awesome and accessible. (No matter how shoehorned in it is, because seriously, this book does more shoehorning than a freaking Payless model!)
or
2. You REALLY want to read every Newbery Medalist or Honor book, even the really terrible ones that will make you question your life choices.
The illustrations are lovely, sure, but they do NOT require reading the text, so if you ever get a hold of this book, just look at the illustrations and pretend the text never happened.
Perhaps, you may think, Kim is being too hard on this little book, this old book that only serious kidlit aficionados have any awareness of. This book that she didn't even finish! Please note that I have only ever marked one book as DNF before this one. I stick out terrible things far more often than I'd like to admit, but this book was painful and showed no signs of getting any better.
Reason 1: The voice. All forced whimsy and quirk, significant of nothing. I am entirely certain I have never read a book told in a more painful style than this. It flips from past-tense to present-tense with all of the coherence of a rambling drunk. The narrator breaks the fourth wall because... she can? And, again, alliteration. Painfully pointless alliteration. It's impossible to figure out which part of the 6-12 age group it's aimed at, considering it talks to the audience as if they are profoundly unintelligent four-year-olds. I swear it was sentient and personally thought I was stupid, that's how bad it was. I have no idea where the story was going, because it kept going off to explore the psyches and backstories of all these ridiculously precious adult characters who are SO CONCERNED about where this profoundly uninteresting protagonist ran off to. (If you're so concerned, go FIND HIM!)
Admittedly, exploring the mental state of the caterpillar was kind of cute. I have a major weakness for caterpillars, though, so that's not really a plus in the book's camp.
Reason 2: Holy unbelievable racism, Batman! Those of us well-versed in children's literature are aware that many, many, many, many old children's books have no great shortage of offensive stereotypes. Even so, there comes a point where your alarm sounds so loudly that you have to take a look at what you're reading and say, "What the hell?" There is a depiction of a Native American character that is so offensively brutish and animalistic that it honestly pained me to read his sections of the "plot," and there's a completely bizarre tangent about a Chinese decoration that is both completely pointless and horrifically stereotypical. I've seen episodes of Family Guy with more racial sensitivity than this book. I'm not going to chalk it up to being a product of its time. That robs the author of the book of her responsibility in creating something like this. A huge part of why I stopped reading was because I really, really didn't want to see just how much more offensive it could get. I could tell that it was going to get worse.
Reason 3: Being called "distinguished" in the history books will only get you so far. There's no way in telling what will age well and what will not, and I don't believe it's the responsibility of the yearly Newbery committees to figure that out, personally. Still, when we look back on the shiny sticker parade, there are going to be things we can reasonably refer to as "mistakes." And, oh boy, is this one of 'em. In my estimation, there is nothing distinguished here text-wise, in any positive sense. The characters barely register as existent, save for the animals. The writing, as said above, is atrocious and insulting. The plot rambles. The theme, which is the alphabet, is pulled off well only in that there definitely are lots of letters in this book. In short, it's very hard to see what makes this book special, and not at all hard to see why it's obscure and out of print.
I never complain about whether or not a kid would willingly pick up a book if it's won an award, but this is a book that I think maybe two currently existing children would ever willingly gravitate to, and I'm fairly certain it would fail to captivate them as well.
Perhaps the remaining 79% of the book that I avoided like the plague is a riveting masterpiece of suspense and beautiful writing, but judging by what preceded it, I sincerely doubt that. An apple a day keeps the doctor away; what do I have to do to keep Appleby Capple away?
March 10, 2019
Working my way through all the Newbery Award/Honor books, and here we have a fun-loving alphabet book full of the nonsensical plot lines, behavioral silliness, and word/letter play that young children love to listen to. This is a great one for reading out loud, though its length is one for a chapter-a-day versus one sit-down read. Being an alphabet book, of course there is a good smattering of alliteration, but it is nowhere near as prolific or annoying as mentioned by another reviewer.
Like others of Parrish's works, and several older Newbery books, this old picture book does have paternalistic-style xenophobia in it. It is not, as another reviewer has spewed, cruelly racist. The Native Americans are not portrayed any sillier than the Caucasians - pretty much everyone in here is equal-opportunity ridiculous and lovable. (If you want to see some truly horrid racism - along with dripping zealotry and Manifest Destiny sewage- in an old Newbery, go to the 1939 Daniel Boone "biography" by James -Daugherty. But save youself the awful taste in your mouth - it is 100% terrible.)
This Appleby Capple book is outdated, but quaint.
Like others of Parrish's works, and several older Newbery books, this old picture book does have paternalistic-style xenophobia in it. It is not, as another reviewer has spewed, cruelly racist. The Native Americans are not portrayed any sillier than the Caucasians - pretty much everyone in here is equal-opportunity ridiculous and lovable. (If you want to see some truly horrid racism - along with dripping zealotry and Manifest Destiny sewage- in an old Newbery, go to the 1939 Daniel Boone "biography" by James -Daugherty. But save youself the awful taste in your mouth - it is 100% terrible.)
This Appleby Capple book is outdated, but quaint.
June 2, 2017
Such a delightful and interesting children's book published in 1950. The book serves to give practice in learning the alphabet as each chapter has a letter of the alphabet as the focus letter for vocabulary in that chapter. It is not a picture or board book. It was not scored by Accelerated Reader, however, it is a wonderful introduction into expanding a student's vocabulary-with just the proper touch of whimsey! For a couple of hours, I was transported back to my elementary classroom and the sweet memories of class reading time when I was free to read to my "heart's content."
November 11, 2021
The Dream Coach was a better book. This was just an alphabet soup with a pretense of a plot and lots of silliness mixed in with the old school racist depictions of other cultures.
April 5, 2023
This is an A B C book that teaches the letters of the alphabet through a cute story with many characters.
Want to Read
June 14, 20251951 Newbery honor book
May 2, 2016
I think this would be better as a cartoon short than a book, provided they cleaned it up a little bit.
The book is basically about a kid who gets lost on one of his relative's 99th birthday. And the zoo animals are let out and all is chaos. There are over 100 characters, including the named animals, and the author tries to give personalities to all of them. It's just too much.
And the people in the book are all quite stupid, but ESPECIALLY the Native Americans. So yes, the book is definitely a racist one.
AND the book seems to be geared toward aristocratic British wannabes. For example, the bears have to lick their paws because they don't have finger bowls. And the author seemed to think the kids were raised by a nurse rather than their parents. And it is expected to be normal to have some great Uncle who has traveled a lot to India.
But almost the worst part is the way the author tries to make it interesting. The book is divided into chapters, 26 in all, marked by their corresponding letter of the alphabet. Then there are stupid (and I realize not everyone agrees with me here) pictures where everything in the picture that starts with the letter of the current chapter has that letter drawn on there somewhere, with very unsuccessful blending going on. No, the boy named Apple does NOT look like the letter 'A,' yet the attempt is made on the cover. This theme continues throughout the book. Needless to say I stopped looking at the pictures to help me get through this garbage more quickly.
The book is basically about a kid who gets lost on one of his relative's 99th birthday. And the zoo animals are let out and all is chaos. There are over 100 characters, including the named animals, and the author tries to give personalities to all of them. It's just too much.
And the people in the book are all quite stupid, but ESPECIALLY the Native Americans. So yes, the book is definitely a racist one.
AND the book seems to be geared toward aristocratic British wannabes. For example, the bears have to lick their paws because they don't have finger bowls. And the author seemed to think the kids were raised by a nurse rather than their parents. And it is expected to be normal to have some great Uncle who has traveled a lot to India.
But almost the worst part is the way the author tries to make it interesting. The book is divided into chapters, 26 in all, marked by their corresponding letter of the alphabet. Then there are stupid (and I realize not everyone agrees with me here) pictures where everything in the picture that starts with the letter of the current chapter has that letter drawn on there somewhere, with very unsuccessful blending going on. No, the boy named Apple does NOT look like the letter 'A,' yet the attempt is made on the cover. This theme continues throughout the book. Needless to say I stopped looking at the pictures to help me get through this garbage more quickly.
April 8, 2011
So I occasionally think that being too politically correct is ridiculous, but this book could use a whole lot of p.c.-ness and still not be p.c. The story's Native Americans have every possible stereotype as well as IQs in the double digits. Actually, everyone in the story has IQs in the double digits, so that's not super bad, I suppose.
A chapter book-length alphabet book is a novel (haha) idea, but unlike some alphabet books, this is not the sort I would want to reread. The illustrations are clever, but the story is much too silly for me (in addition to being full of silly stereotypes).
A chapter book-length alphabet book is a novel (haha) idea, but unlike some alphabet books, this is not the sort I would want to reread. The illustrations are clever, but the story is much too silly for me (in addition to being full of silly stereotypes).
November 10, 2023
Each chapter is a letter of the alphabet, and there is a lot of alliteration. A boy named Apple gets lost, but most of the characters don't even realize he is lost until near the end of the story. I think third grade me would have loved this. Adult me felt that while the idea was original, the execution was not the greatest. I felt all the alliteration got in the way of the story. I was still going to give it three stars, but the joking around about scalping was distasteful to me.
May 13, 2023
This is a nonsense alphabet book. It's 184 pages with a chapter for each letter, continuing a faint plot line and filling in as many words that start with the chapter's letter as possible. I'm not sure what the intended audience is. Maybe it's intended for a read aloud to kids learning their letters? The reading level and attention required is easily above what that age group could generally do on their own. I appreciated the fun of it, and I learned new words.
April 15, 2012
My high rating is more for the artwork than the text.
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October 22, 20144656c4b2-6d0b-4399-b33a-ff5fdcbe3bd5
January 5, 2015
Read one of her other books rather than this one. Odd.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews