The Golden Apple

by Max Bolliger, Celestino Piatti, Roseanna Hoover

The Golden Apple

Genres: Picture Books

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Swiss writer and children's book author.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, I really and truly do not at all find Max Bolliger's featured text, I do not consider the talking animal fable he presents in the 1970 picture book Der goldene Apfel (The Golden Apple) to my personal reading tastes (and with both my adult reading self and equally so my inner child strongly agreeing with regard to this but actually for rather different reasons). Now my inner child for the most part just does not appreciate Max Bolliger's writing style in Der goldene Apfel, does not like how awkwardly flowing Bolliger's presented words often are and also how totally and utterly tedious and stagnant, until there suddenly is some huge battle and brouhaha amongst the animals waiting for the golden apple of the book title to drop (and with the story of Der goldene Apfel basically and strangely unexpectedly moving from zero action at all to complete and violent mayhem almost out of the blue so to speak, and which certainly feels kind of weird and rather uncomfortably disconcerting). But my adult reading self (albeit also admittedly not really all that enamoured of Max Bolliger's story contents and general penmanship) is actually and admittedly much more frustrated and annoyed that in Der goldene Apfel there is presented a very strange and problematic collection of animals that should actually (and realistically) not be featured together in the wild (and that it certainly does textually bother me how in Der goldene Apfel native to Africa animals like a giraffe, a lion and an elephant are portrayed right alongside of creatures endemic to Eurasia such as a tiger, a squirrel and a red fox, leaving for me a distinct and uncomfortable textual acceptance and normalisation by Max Bolliger of invasive animal species in Der goldene Apfel and as such making me personally not only more than somewhat frustrated but also majorly academically as well as intellectually, philosophically annoyed).

And finally, with regard to Celestino Piatti's accompanying artwork for Der goldene Apfel, Piatti's pictures, they are of course (and like usual) aesthetically magical and brilliant, with much depicted colour, expressivity and also some delightful illustrative touches such as Piatti's trademark owls and smiling faced suns making brief appearances (although I do wish that in Der goldene Apfel the lion would not be illustrated by Celestino Piatti as wearing a crown on his head). But certainly, truly, for me the ONLY thing absolutely and unreservedly positive concerning Der goldene Apfel is the pictorial quality Piatti's stunning and powerful illustrations, but that my appreciation and even my actual adoration and love and of the pictures is also sadly not sufficient for me to consider more than a two star rating for Der goldene Apfel (because Max Bolliger's text truly does majorly grate and indeed even Celestino Piatti's pictures, they of course also visually show a group of animals that really should not be seen as existing together and in the same place in the wilderness).