Johnny Appleseed

Transitioning gracefully from fact to myth and back again, Kellogg’s take on the remarkable life and Johnny Appleseed legend which grew up around John Chapman is an attractive introduction to one of America’s first folk heroes. Hewing close to reality with a linear but episodic narrative, the tale of the most famous nurseryman in the United States is simplified for young audiences and presents as fact not only verifiable details of Chapman’s life but also a handful of digressions into possible but improbable occurrences. Among these is his victory in an impromptu tree-chopping contest which reaches into nigh-surreality when aided by the wordless full-bleed opening showing a legion of woodsmen in an axe-wielding frenzy. Beyond such direct embellishment of the tale, Kellogg’s densely textured art creates a frontier that, if not quite Disney-fied, certainly contains vastly more smiling woodland creatures in picturesque vistas and far fewer instances of hardship and mortal danger than contemporary accounts suggest. Illustration dominates every page from pastoral front endpages to humorously cartographic back endpages, save the Author’s Note on the last page of the volume, in which Kellogg writes about his research into John Chapman and references the works he used as a basis for his own playfully educational biography.

Johnny Appleseed by Steven Kellogg; illus. by the author
Primary
Morrow Junior Books
48 pp.
Published 1988
ISBN 0-688-06417-5
$16.99

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