johnny appleseed book review

Review: Joshua Whitehead’s Jonny Appleseed is a milestone novel about love, in all its messy forms

This article was published more than 6 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

• Jonny Appleseed
• By Joshua Whitehead
• Arsenal Pulp Press

Every so often, a book comes along that feels like a milestone, with revolution nestled beneath every sentence, every word. Oji-Cree/nehiyaw two-spirit/Indigiqueer writer Joshua Whitehead’s Jonny Appleseed is one of those books. Of course, anyone who has read Whitehead’s futuristic, cyberpunk, poetic masterpiece full-metal indigiqueer , released earlier this year, won’t be surprised at this statement.

On paper, Jonny Appleseed is about a young two-spirit/Indigiqueer NDN glitter princess named Jonny trying to get back to the rez from the big city in time for his stepfather’s funeral. Jonny had a difficult relationship with his stepfather, Roger. He not only made Jonny feel bad for being queer, but also “called me an apple when I told him I wanted to leave the rez. ‘You’re red on the outside,’ he said, ‘and white on the inside.’” Still, Jonny knows that without Roger, his “Momma’s got the sick of loneliness, the kind that’ll turn your liver into coal” and he loves his mother, so he decides to go back so he can support her.

Love, in all its forms, permeates this novel. Complicated love, messy love, nourishing love, platonic love, sexual love, familial love, secret love. Every character in this book is portrayed with empathy and understanding – from Jonny’s Momma, to his kokum (or grandmother), to his best friend/lover Tias, to Tias’s girlfriend (and, eventually, Jonny’s good friend) Jordan. All of them are complicated, dealing with their own traumas in various ways, but they’re never only their traumas, which is important. Each character has hopes, dreams, vulnerabilities, regrets. Each one laughs and jokes. In other words, they feel like real people. Long after I finished the book, I found myself missing these characters. That isn’t something that happens often.

Whitehead doesn’t just write about love of people, but also places. When Jonny talks about the decision to leave his rez, it’s clear that he feels conflicted. “Leaving hurts,” Jonny says. “It’s not glamorous like Julia Roberts makes it seem.” What’s particularly beautiful is the way that Whitehead writes about the rez, the way it’s imbued with such care and open-eyed clarity: “Even in the 21st century, two brown boys can’t fall in love on the rez.… But it’s home because the bannock is still browning in the oven and your kokum is still making tea and eating Arrowroot biscuits. It’s home because it has to be – routine satiates these pangs.”

Perhaps the most refreshing part of this book is the frankness with which Whitehead writes about sex – particularly queer sex. As soon as the book opens, he lets readers know what they’re in for: “I figured out I was gay when I was eight. I liked to stay up late after everyone went to bed and watch Queer as Folk on my kokum’s TV. She had a satellite and all the channels, pirated of course.”

Joshua Whitehead. (Joshua Whitehead)

From there, Jonny tells us about his first hookup with a white guy, his catfishing of Tias, who he originally told that he was a girl named Lucia, his gradual relationship with Tias and all the drunken hookups and hustles in between. As an Indigenous sex worker, Jonny often has to deal with what he calls “treaty chasers,” or men “who only want me to play NDN.” These men never recognize that what they’re asking Jonny to enact is a fantasy. One even complains when Jonny dresses up as Catwoman, saying he wanted Jonny to dress up as “himself,” which he interpreted as “the fringe and [stuff].” The arrogance of assuming that this stereotypical image of an Indian is in any way grounded in reality, particularly the reality of a stranger, is one that Indigenous readers will know well. It’s particularly good to see Whitehead acknowledge how racist stereotypes work within the setting of sexual fantasy, as so many racist stereotypes are ingrained in modern-day sex and pornography, even in queer communities.

Jonny’s relationship with Tias in many ways drives the book. Both assure one another they’re not gay – a proclamation that Tias in particular has to make, as his adoptive father is violently heterosexual and toxically masculine, punishing Tias for any deviations from the “manly” norm. Still, his love for and attraction to Jonny can’t be denied. After Jonny tells Tias about a traumatizing night of drinking and violence that left him hospitalized, Tias leads him to his bedroom, lays a cold washcloth on his head and holds him, telling him everything will be okay. This is what I think of when I think of decolonial love, which Leanne Betasamosake Simpson wrote of in her book Islands of Decolonial Love : love that sees your trauma and carries you through it. As Jonny says, “Funny how an NDN ‘love you’ sounds more like, ‘I’m in pain with you.’”

Despite its often serious subject matter, Jonny Appleseed is a very funny book, in the same way that Indigenous people themselves are often very funny despite our traumas. In that way, reading this book felt to me like home. Every line felt like being back on Six Nations, laughing with my family, even though I was in my apartment in Brantford. With its fluid structure and timelines, Jonny Appleseed creates a dream-like reading experience – and with a narrator as wise, funny and loveable as Jonny, it’s the sort of dream you don’t want to wake up from.

“I am my own best medicine,” Jonny says. He’s ours, too.

Alicia Elliott is a Tuscarora writer from Six Nations, currently living in Brantford, Ont., and author of the forthcoming book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground.

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Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Jonny appleseed by joshua whitehead won canada reads 2021, when it was championed by devery jacobs.

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Jonny Appleseed  by Joshua Whitehead  won  Canada Reads  2021, when it was championed by  Devery Jacobs .

About Jonny Appleseed

"You're gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine" is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young two-spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling novel. Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the "rez," and his former life, to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The next seven days are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum. Jonny's world is a series of breakages, appendages and linkages — and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life. 

Jonny Appleseed  is a unique, shattering vision of Indigenous life, full of grit, glitter and dreams. ( From Arsenal Pulp Press )

Jonny Appleseed  was on the longlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize  and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and the  Amazon Canada First Novel Award . It also won   the Lambda Literary Award for gay fiction .

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Why Joshua Whitehead wrote Jonny Appleseed

"Jonny is a character that's been with me since I was 17 or 18. He's this little kid obsessed with the beatniks and problem novels like Go Ask Alice. He came from poems that I excised from  full-metal indigiqueer . When I took those little poems and planted them into this new idea for a story, Jonny took the stage and was like, 'Here I am — write me into the world.' 

Jonny is the better parts of me, hyperbolized. From that came this shiny, glittered figure of light for myself. - Joshua Whitehead

"A lot of people are reading him as this hyper-confident, super-suave swindling character. But I had to craft a two-spirit character who has pain, but who is triumphant in that pain, shifting it into love. Jonny is the better parts of me, hyperbolized. From that came this shiny, glittered figure of light for myself."

Read more in his interview with The Next Chapter .

Watch the Canada Reads trailer for Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Canada Reads 2021: Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Interviews with joshua whitehead.

Devery Jacobs on the beauty and hope in Jonny Appleseed

From the book

I figured that I was gay when I was eight. I stayed up late after everyone went to bed and watched  Queer as Folk  on my kokum's TV. She had a satellite and all the channels, pirated of course. At the time, my mom and I were living with my kokum because my dad had left us thinking he was Dolly Parton or Garth Brooks or something.  Queer as Folk  aired at midnight on Showcase; I muted the channel, added subtitles, and watched as four gay men lived their lives in Pittsburgh. I wanted to be like them, I wanted to have lofts and go to gay bars and dance with cute boys and blow and get blown in a Philly gloryhole. I wanted to work in comic shops and universities, be sexy and rich. I wanted that.

From  Jonny Appleseed  by Joshua Whitehead ©2018. Published by Arsenal Pulp Press.

Other books by Joshua Whitehead

The  canada reads  2021 contenders.

• Rosey Edeh champions  The Midnight Bargain  by C.L. Polk
• Scott Helman champions  Two Trees Make a Forest  by Jessica J. Lee
• Devery Jacobs champions  Jonny Appleseed  by Joshua Whitehead
• Paul Sun-Hyung Lee champions  Hench  by Natalie Zina Walschots
• Roger Mooking champions  Butter Honey Pig Bread  by Francesca Ekwuyasi

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A must read even if it’s not your type of book (which I assumed it wouldn’t be!)

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

April 21, 2021 by wicherwill 2 Comments

This isn’t my type of book–there’s a plot, of sorts, but really the book is Jonny by way of Hunter S. Thompson, an analogy that I am forced to make because, as I noted, stream-of-consciousness/flashback-and-how-the-past-relates-to-the-future books aren’t really my jam and so I don’t know many of them.

For all that I never found myself fully enmeshed in this novel, I never found myself checking out either, which is more than I can say for many books that are “my” sort of reads. Whitehead does an excellent job at seizing your attention and keeping it throughout, skipping from vignette to vignette (all are the length of a chapter, and chapters vary in length but are never very long) with a sort of frenetic energy that does justice to the (a?) self-styled “NDN glitter princess” of the Peguis First Nation (phrase in quotes not to cast aspersions on the title, but to indicate that it is a quote).

The loose plot is thus: Jonny has seven days to earn enough money to return to the reservation where he grew up, to attend the funeral of a stepfather for whom he has conflicted feelings. Indeed, he has many feelings, about his childhood and his sexuality and his gender identity and his relationship with Tias (his on-and-off something) and his kokum (grandmother), and they all vie for attention with the business of making money to get home.

There’s a lot to unpack within the walls of Whitehead’s novel, so I’ll taper this review to one that I think holds particular poignancy during this time of COVID: Jonny’s kokum, and all that she represents for both him and the community at large.

No one has been spared the devastation of COVID-19, but for the Indigenous communities of the U.S. (in particular, I’ll say, because those are the stories that I encounter) the uneven burden of death which fell on the elderly had the doubly deadly effect of severing ties to cultural and historical wisdom. Kokum’s entire life is a teaching, her very way of moving through the world an homage and living testament to an entire people whose identity the Canadian government tried to systematically and brutally stamp out. Her death, which occurs prior to the novel’s start, creates a tear in the fabric of the Peguis nation itself.

Jonny is searching for meaning and acceptance and belonging in a world that fetishizes and willfully misunderstands and seeks to remain ignorant of the truth of the lands we occupy. The connection with his kokum, the lessons she teaches him and the small cultural elements she embodies in every day life…I’m grasping for words to describe the feeling, but every time she would show up in a page was a sigh of relief, a knowledge that Jonny (and the reader) could exhale and be comforted both physically and emotionally.

I’m not centering my experience, but from the smaller seed of it (I’m from a different culture, and I too lean heavily on the oral wisdom of my (female) elders to learn how to be of my culture) came the ability to understand the grief-tree of Jonny’s loss. That which he (and others) were able to learn from Kokum is the sum total of their understanding of their culture. Without it, of course, they will adapt and learn how to merge their experiences with the experiences of their elders, but they’re starting from a pot of knowledge that can no more expand.

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Roger's Reads

Author & Book Reviewer

Review of Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

June 22, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

This story follows a witty, young Native American man named Jonny Appleseed, member of the Peguis First Nation, who has left the reservation to live in the big city of Winnipeg. There, Jonny reinvents himself and runs his own business as a cybersex worker, in which he fetishizes himself via webcam to earn a living. As the story begins, Jonny has just received the news that his Stepfather Roger has passed away and he has only seven days to earn enough cash to return to the Rez for the funeral.

What follows is a brief, non-linear peak into Jonny’s life as he recalls memories of his strong, no-nonsense Kokum (his Grandmother), his mother, his homophobic stepfather, and his relationship with Tias. During the novel, we flash back and forth from Jonny’s life back on the Reservation to the present where he is working as a sex worker and maintaining his romantic yet complicated relationship with Tias, with whom he’s been friends/lovers with since childhood.

Through Jonny’s first-person narrative, we explore such issues as racism, anti-gay violence, friendship, love, loss, Native American identity, trauma, the challenges of being “Indigiqueer” (identifying as both Indigenous and queer), sexual awakening and most of all, survival.

In this way, the story is sometimes a bit harrowing and cringeworthy, while other times tender, funny and beautiful. This is a real, relevant, and eye-opening book — an intense yet beautiful story written for voices that need to be heard. Jonny Appleseed is a sincere, honest story about a person’s growth despite sometimes seemingly suffocating racism and homophobia.

I especially enjoyed the intimate passages where Jonny reflects upon his life with Tias — how they met, how they became lovers and friends, and the somewhat strange relationship they maintain in the present day. There was also plenty of laugh-out-loud humor in this story, especially revolving around Jonny and his Kokum.

Overall, I found Jonny Appleseed to be a refreshing, brilliant work that’s gorgeously expressive and poetic yet with a certain rawness to it that makes it real and relatable for the reader. I felt that the author does a superb job taking us back into the mind of our two-spirit protagonist. I also liked how the story came together in the end, with everything wrapping up nicely during the last few pages. Overall, an impactful, diverse and important book from a great author. Recommended!

Warning: Given that our protagonist earns a living as a sex worker, there are quite a few graphic descriptions of sexual situations and profanity — so more sensitive readers be warned.

You can check out Jonny Appleseed here at Amazon or at The Book Depository

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Jonny Appleseed

46 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-19

Chapters 20-31

Chapters 32-39

Chapters 40-54

Character Analysis

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Essay Topics

Summary and Study Guide

The novel Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead was originally published in 2018 by Arsenal Pulp Press. Whitehead, a queer Indigenous writer from Peguis Frist Nation, uses the auto-fictional character of Jonny to explore the intersections of LGBTQ+ and Indigenous identity. The novel was a 2021 Canada Reads Winner and the winner of a Lambda Literary Award. It was also a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

This guide uses the 2018 ePub edition from Arsenal Pulp Press.

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Content Warning: Several chapters in the book reference childhood physical abuse, explicit sexual acts, and one chapter references childhood sexual assault. These chapters are noted beneath the individual chapter headings.

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The novel follows the first-person narrator, Jonny, as he figures out whether he can make enough money from webcamming (or “camming,” broadcasting oneself over the Internet) to make it home to the reserve for his stepfather’s funeral. For camming, he uses Snapchat to put on individual shows for clients. Most often requested is Jonny dressing up like an Indigenous stereotype , in full regalia, and masturbating on camera. He seems to accept this wryly, knowing that it's part of how white Canadians fetishize him. Jonny identifies as Two-Spirit—a non-binary gender identity that is specific to Indigenous cultures. He has romantic and sexual relationships only with men, and especially with his childhood friend, Tias .

The narrative structure moves back and forth between the present day and stories in Jonny’s past. The anecdotes from the past largely focus on Jonny’s grandmother, his kokum , who played a significant role in both raising him and in teaching him how to be the person he is. His kokum accepted him for who he was, and they enjoyed exploring femininity together. His mother also accepted him, but she was harder on him. She tried to teach him not to let anyone else take anything from him for free, and that having bad experiences with alcohol was part of what it meant to grow up Indigenous. His mother was largely absent during his childhood due to her substance abuse, especially alcohol.

The childhood chapters about Tias illuminate the history of his relationship with Jonny. Tias’s adoptive father physically abused him anytime he expressed signs of femininity; as an adult, Tias refuses to consider himself gay despite regularly having sex with Jonny. He does not tell anyone else about his relationship with Jonny, although many of the other characters in the novel seem to be aware of it anyway. His girlfriend, Jordan , senses something is wrong—she physically assaults Jonny for sending sexually charged text messages to Tias. The kids on the reservation, where all three of them grow up, assault and demean Jonny. Sometimes Tias is forced to join in, though Jonny doesn’t blame him for it. Jonny and Tias tell each other that they love one another.

As an adult, Tias struggles to transition to life away from the reservation. He and Jonny continue their on-again off-again relationship, which only comes to a significant pause when Tias gets Jordan pregnant. They decide to keep the pregnancy though the novel ends before the child’s birth.

Over the course of the novel, the characters all struggle with the transition to adulthood. It’s hard to imagine a future on the reservation, but it’s equally hard for them to make their way in the world beyond it. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Jonny is discriminated against as an Indigenous person—shooed away from a convenience store as an assumed vagrant, threatened by his own neighbor as an assumed thief. Despite the difficulties, he doesn’t let life in the city discourage him. He enjoys the ability to visit queer-dominant spaces, which he was not able to access on the reservation. He still struggles with being Indigenous and queer; when other members of the LGBTQ+ community ask him where he’s from, he rarely shares that he’s Indigenous for fear of being fetishized or tokenized.

Jonny makes enough money to get a ride back to the reservation from an Indigenous woman who acts as an unofficial cab driver and who resells stolen goods to make ends meet. Though he ends up missing his stepfather's wake, he makes it back home in time for the funeral. He realizes that he doesn’t particularly care about his stepfather’s death for his own sake, but for the sake of his mother. Though he and his mother are still often at odds, they figure out a way to make peace with each other and move forward with a loving adult relationship.

At the end of the novel, Jonny realizes that the reservation is home, and that it feels like home to him. He’s only been away in Winnipeg for a couple of years, but the distance has helped him realize and deepen his sense of belonging to the reservation. The novel ends on this note of realization, and on Jonny’s resolve to move forward as an Indigenous Two-Spirit person.

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What We're Reading

What we're reading, april 12-18.

A retelling of the famous Johnny Appleseed myth; a devastating memoir about the birth of the organic farming movement and its effect on a homesteading family; an attempt to discover the secrets of Little House on the Prairie ; and an NPR contributor's struggle with the recession and its economic aftermath.

Johnny Appleseed

The man, the myth, the american story.

by Howard Means

At Easter time, Peter Cottontail comes hopping into our mind's eye — helped out by an eponymous song that's easy for kids to learn. And when the apple trees open their blossoms, we may have a thought for Johnny Appleseed, wandering the frontier with a sack on his shoulder and a tin pot on his head. But he's real, right? I've known the name John Chapman, and realizing that's about the extent of my knowledge, welcomed the chance to read a fresh biography. Chapman left the actual world in March 1845, dying of "winter plague" in a cabin near Fort Wayne, Ind., where he had asked for shelter and food, having walked 15 miles in cold, wet weather. His mythical status as Johnny Appleseed was already lofty: a smiling man — a vegetarian — who shared the forest with the Indians and bears and cougars, and brought his gift of apples to an expanding new America.

I'm impressed by the genealogical research that Howard Means offers, but these were pages I could easily have skipped. And I also failed to appreciate details of Chapman's devotion to the Church of the New Jerusalem and the teachings of Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. It was the wandering Johnny Appleseed that rescued the book for me — Chapman leaving his Massachusetts home for scarce-settled Pennsylvania river lands, and then Ohio and finally Indiana. He wanted to stay on the moving, far western edge of the country, planting seedling orchards along the way. The apple trees would help the pioneer families stake out their settlements and be treasured for their flowering in the spring, fruit in the fall, hard cider come winter. And surely Chapman was a fascination at hearthsides, with his gospel-tinged backwoods storytelling, even though Means concludes: 'By our modern definitions, John Chapman almost certainly was insane.' -- Noah Adams, senior correspondent

Hardcover, 336 pages; Simon & Schuster; list price, $26; publication date, April 12

This Life Is In Your Hands

One dream, sixty acres, and a family undone.

By Melissa Coleman

Eliot Coleman was one of the stars of the "back to the earth" movement of the late '60s and early '70s, after he moved to the rural coast of Maine with his young wife to start living off the land. Eliot and Sue (known in this book as Papa and Mama) were homesteaders — no running water, no electricity and a small one-room farmhouse where they made all of their vegetarian meals, raised directly from their own land. The Colemans' first daughter, Melissa, has now grown up, and she tells her version of remote farm life in This Life is In Your Hands . The book chronicles the more luscious aspects of homesteading — the basketball-sized squash, the ripe strawberries, the cool wind off the ocean — but Coleman also divulges the darker secrets of her family and tracks her parents' ultimate undoing (involving a tragedy that we won't reveal here). This is a story of paradise lost; of why the earth both gives and takes away.

I am not usually a fan of memoir, or at least not when the person involved hasn't won an Oscar or a Nobel Prize. But I decided to take the leap inside the pages of This Life Is In Your Hands, and I'm glad I did it, because it is a rare breed of book — a memoir that justifies its own existence; that feels like it needs to exist. What Coleman does so well here is break down a deeply seated myth about giving up the luxuries of city life and returning to the land: that this is the path to paradise (hard work, yes, but idyllic and pure). Coleman suggests that there is an immense amount of beauty to be found in the rural life, but that there are also emotional wells that cannot be filled with the austere farming experience, one that relies more on the intellect than emotion. In the end, the organic farming movement of the 1970s was as much about science and physical experimentation as it was about passion, and Coleman shows that without the essential ingredient of heart, any family — no matter how perfect and revolutionary it seems — is in danger of experiencing real loss. — Rachel Syme, books editor

Hardcover, 336 pages; Harper; list price, $25.99; publication date, April 12

Related NPR Stories

Children's books, 'little house on the prairie's' wilder women, the wilder life, my adventures in the lost world of little house on the prairie.

By Wendy McClure

Wendy McClure is an unsentimental writer, but she loves the Little House On The Prairie books. No, she really loves them. She loves them so much that she bought a butter churn on eBay. And she churned butter — you know, just to see. She took off on a trip with her heroically game boyfriend (who's charming in part because he doesn't insist on making a point of how heroically game he is), and they visited historic places where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived, and museums and pageants and kitschy stores where she's still beloved. The Wilder Life is a book of stories about these adventures, and unlike a lot of similarly structured books in which writers appear to be doing unusual things just to write books about them, McClure essentially uses the opportunity to write a series of thoughtful essays about memory at different levels. There's the tiny, very specific theme of her particular childhood love of the Little House books, but as she immerses herself in those memories, it pulls back to become a book about the way all of us relate to stories we hear as children, and about the way nostalgia operates unpredictably and sometimes painfully, and ultimately even about our false cultural memories of a romantic pioneer past that only sort of happened.

I've read Wendy McClure's writing for a long time, and what I always like about it is that it's warm but also sharp and funny. It's deeply human without being maudlin, even when she's writing about subjects like the death of her mother and what it may have to do with her exploration of this very dear childhood memory. Some of the stories she tells are sweet, like having tea at a farmhouse staffed by perhaps the only person who loves Little House as much as she does. Some are darkly hilarious, like a 'homesteading' weekend that turns out to have considerably more to do with the apocalypse than she was expecting. There is, unavoidably, some tonal inconsistency between the sort of 'Wilder family history' sections and the 'funny writer contemplates very real death in a lightning storm while whimsically camped out in a covered wagon' sections, but she makes it all work. It's an entertaining and touching book — and an essential for Little House fans, obviously. -- Linda Holmes, editor of NPR's Monkey See blog

Hardcover, 352 pages; Riverhead; list price, $25.95; publication date, April 14

Reporter's Notebook

Recession diary: the long and winding road home, a man, woman, baby and an empty bank account, made for you and me, going west, going broke, finding home.

By Caitlin Shetterly

If you have listened to Weekend Edition for the past few years, than you're likely to remember the story of Caitlin Shetterly — she and her husband decided to leave their home in Maine and pursue the dream of living in California. Unfortunately, the recession hit, and suddenly the couple found themselves without jobs — and pregnant. The pair had to trek back across the country to squeeze into Shetterly's mother's house in Maine, and Shetterly blogged (and spoke) about the journey (and her dwindling bank account) along the way for NPR. The Shetterly family was just one of many hit hard by the economic downturn, but her graceful telling of her struggles with money, health and optimism is as unique as it is universal.

When Made for You and Me begins, Caitlin Shetterly and her husband, Dan, are sleeping in separate beds — and not by choice. They are living in her mother's house, two years after getting married, crammed into tiny beds a few feet away from each other. Her baby is nursing and needs constant attention, and Caitlin is lying alone in the dark, thinking about how her life got to this point. She wanted to live in Los Angeles, baking in the Western sun. She wanted to start a new life far away from Maine and her family, and yet here she was, married with a child, right back where she started. It is depressing. But then, all stories of the recession and how hard it has hit Americans at the individual level are bound to be filed away in the 'downers' category. That doesn't mean we shouldn't read them. I was looking forward to tucking into Shetterly's book, having very much enjoyed her segments on NPR; hoping for more of her battered-but-bouyant tone. I found this in droves — and I'd recommend the book to anyone personally affected by the downturn — but I do wish that Shetterly had dared to dive a little deeper into the recession writ large here, examining a world outside her own experience. Instead, the story feels a bit myopic — and unfinished. At the book's end, the Shetterlys are still struggling to make sense of it all. Perhaps that's a sign of the times — who can make sense of the economy right now? — and the fact that no family's story ties up neatly in a bow these days, but I still found myself craving more resolution and some solid advice for others confronting the same hardships. — Rachel Syme, books editor

Hardcover, 256 pages; Hyperion Voice; list price, $23.99; publication date, March 8

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• Published July 13, 2021 Updated Aug. 2, 2021

APPLESEED By Matt Bell

Climate is everywhere in fiction these days. Omar El Akkad’s “American War,” Lydia Millet’s “A Children’s Bible,” N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, Carys Bray’s “When the Lights Go Out” and Selah Saterstrom’s “Slab” are just a few of the many recent novels to highlight global warming and related extreme weather.

For some years, Matt Bell (“Scrapper” and “Cataclysm Baby”) has had climate and apocalypse on his mind, and his excellent new novel continues and deepens his investment. Set in the past, the near future and a thousand years down the dangerous road human beings currently travel, “Appleseed” employs myth, magic and science to give a damning account of the narrative of American exceptionalism and the relentless post-conquest exploitation of this country’s vast natural resources.

What a world, in Bell’s depiction, it used to be. The as-yet unspoiled America navigated by the first of the novel’s three central characters, a tree-planting faun named Chapman, is exuberantly alive: “This overripe abundance all around, the forest gagging itself upon a bright profusion of right living: flowers blooming, chicks crying out, infant rabbits in the brambles.” Chapman, a marvelous reimagining of the historical John Chapman, a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed, roves this 18th-century Eden with his human brother, Nathaniel, planting apple orchards to attract westward settlers in search of fresh land whose native inhabitants they will push out and exploit.

That Nathaniel, whose scheme this is, is driven by the wildly improbable notion that these future settlers will pay the brothers royalties for the privilege of harvesting the apples they stumble upon makes for a trenchant commentary on the self-interest and delusion that underwrote the larger, profit-driven meta-scheme that was Manifest Destiny and that still informs so much individual and collective scheming today.

The magic incarnated by Chapman is followed by the malevolent wonders of technology in the novel’s second major thread. Here, we follow along with John, a brilliant inventor turned repentant eco-rebel, as he tries to atone for his part in creating an Ohio-based, planetwide mega-interest known as Earthtrust. Earthtrust, founded by John’s childhood best friend to help fight the ravages of overfarming and climate change, has become an unambiguous part of the problem. We get a clear idea of where it is all heading in the book’s third thread. In this grim vision of the future, a lonely, haunted entity known first as C-432 and then as C-433 scours the frozen continent for pockets of biomaterial to bring back to the derelict hunk of metal it calls home.

The two C’s in this third thread share not just a letter but also hooves and horns with Chapman from the first — a sign of the skein of connections Bell builds his novel around. The perfect apple one character is searching for is connected to the perfectly inedible bioengineered specimens encountered by another, which in turn are linked to the fruits of an extraordinary future tree that emerges from some highly unexpected soil. Elsewhere, the flowers, chicks and rabbits of the opening pages are glimpsed again in the empty cloned eyes of future animals, and they in turn find their echo far in the future in creatures made of tiny flying robot swarms.

Bell wisely resists going overboard with connective and structural conceits, and so prevents “Appleseed,” with its tripart design of tightly woven threads, from turning into a giant puzzle whose mere completion might have, à la “Cloud Atlas,” by David Mitchell, overpowered its emotional content. Bell is clearly not out in this formally ambitious but still deeply humane work to score points for making nifty formal moves. An appealing earnestness undergirded by deeply felt optimism infuses “Appleseed.” Meaning that if we are not in for the literary equivalent of a Rubik’s Cube in its pages, nor do we have on our hands an unrelentingly savage postapocalyptic hellscape like Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” The direct influences in “Appleseed” — drawn as much, one senses, from high-concept film, television and video games as from literature — lie elsewhere. Bell has metabolized his nodes of inspiration well enough that while they lend interesting texture (a touch of “Westworld” here, of “Black Mirror” and “Oryx and Crake” there), they never overwhelm. This is as it should be. Shoving the whole world over the brink and trying to envision a way in which it might be meaningfully, not cheaply, hauled back up is too tall an order to be played out against a backdrop of nods and winks: Bell has the radical organic rebooting of the whole planet in his sights.

Half measures — like the tepid carbon offsets and slightly more stringent emissions standards we’ve fooled ourselves into believing will somehow solve our problems — won’t get the job done there. The land-taming, rewilding, reseeding and atmosphere-altering ventures that Bell’s flawed, fascinating characters engage in are good as far as they go, but ultimately, “Appleseed” suggests, our current ways of being will all have to be pounded into very small pieces — “Gravel of marble countertops, of ceramic dishes, of stainless steel appliances. Gravel of fences and roadways, gravel of streetlights and traffic signals. Gravel of plastic chairs and plastic dishes and plastic children’s toys” — before anything resembling a rebirth can begin. What emerges on the other side of the apocalypse as “Appleseed” construes it will barely resemble what went into it. But it stands a good chance of being beautiful.

The tough but bracingly redemptive “Appleseed” certainly is. If there are a few small missteps along the way (like the Disney-meets-David Lynch moment near the novel’s end, when sinister dwarves appear), what nearly 500-page novel that takes on the fate of a grievously wounded planet doesn’t have a few? The big picture is that Bell has achieved something special here. “Appleseed,” a highly welcome addition to the growing canon of first-rate contemporary climate fiction, feels timely, prescient and true.

Laird Hunt’s ninth novel, “Zorrie,” was published in February.

APPLESEED By Matt Bell 465 pp. Custom House. $27.99.

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The Real Story Behind “Johnny Appleseed”

Johnny Appleseed was based on a real person, John Chapman, who was eccentric enough without the legends.

We learn as children that Johnny Appleseed spread the gospel of the apple throughout the Midwest. But how did John Chapman, the actual (strange, possibly insane) person behind the legend, become this virtuous frontier character?

It took a good century after Chapman’s death to fully root out his true biography, William Kerrigan explains in “The Invention of Johnny Appleseed.” Born in Massachusetts in 1774, Chapman planted his first orchard on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1790s. For most of the first half of the 19th century, he tramped around Ohio and Indiana, where his unconventional ways gave birth to plenty of tall tales.

And those tall tales grew like apple orchards. “Johnny Appleseed” made his first major appearance in 1871, decades after Chapman’s death in 1845, in Harper’s Monthly via W.D. Haley, an abolitionist-turned-family farm crusader for the Patrons of Husbandry, also known as the Grange movement. Haley celebrated the “faith, hope, charity, and fidelity” of economically-battered post Civil War Midwestern farms and thought Chapman embodied the “values of piety, frugality, and charity championed by the Grange.” Haley’s Johnny Appleseed was such a good guy he wouldn’t hurt a snake or an Indian.

Rosella Rice, who had met Chapman when she was a girl, added to the growing myth. Kerrigan notes how Rice and Haley freely copied each other in painting “a kind of magical Santa Claus responsible for almost all the apples trees planted across Ohio.” The myth was further solidified by a Lydia Marie Child poem in 1881. Johnny Appleseed had become the gentler avatar of the American origin myth, an anti- Daniel Boone . People who remembered the actual Chapman complained about this sentimental hogwash, but to no avail. This was an “American creation story” as Kerrigan says, with Appleseed as a sort of frontier St. Francis of the Apples, a “benign symbol to use to celebrate the process of American empire-building.”

According to Kerrigan, however,  Chapman’s Fort Wayne Sentinel obituary  paints a different story. The obit described Chapman as “well known through this region by his eccentricity and singular garb.” That included a “coarse coffee sack” with a hole for his neck and the waists of four pairs of pants “shingled” ’round him. Chapman was a footloose nurseryman and promoter of both apples and the teachings of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. In fact, the very first notice of Chapman was English, from a 1817 report by the Manchester Swedenborgian society on proselytizing efforts in America. As it happened, Chapman was a star evangelist for the Church of the New Jerusalem. “Johnny Appleseed” mythology ignores the cultish Swedenborgism and the eccentricity of dress, wandering, and homelessness, along with the expanding frontier’s displacement and destruction of Native American communities.

Of course, myths are always products of their time, as Kerrigan shows by tracing the Appleseed legend through its many incarnations as Popular Front icon in the 1930s, Cold War hero in the 1950s, 1960’s proto-hippie, and Reagan-era entrepreneurial genius in the 1980s, was well as environmentalist, friend of the natives, and contemporary tourist magnet. A 2011 biography argued that Chapman should be considered insane by our standards.

So what to tell the kids next time the family’s out apple-picking? As Kerrigan puts it, “a compelling tall tale will always have more sticking power than a careful rendering of facts.”

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

A BOY NAMED JOHNNY CHAPMAN

by Melissa M. Cybulski ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2024

A sweet and inspiring children’s tale that encourages young readers to stay true to themselves.

Cybulski’s historical fiction book for children chronicles the adventures of Johnny Chapman, the little boy who would grow up to become the legendary Johnny Appleseed.

It’s 1783 and 9-year-old Johnny Chapman is living a quiet life with his father, stepmother, and siblings in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. After Johnny is repeatedly disciplined for daydreaming in school by the stern Master Loomis, his father pulls him out, maintaining that “dreamers like Johnny are exactly what this new nation needs.” But now the time has come for him to return to formal schooling with a different (and hopefully more lenient) teacher. While he’s initially nervous, Johnny turns out to have many exciting adventures during the school year, like performing in the Incorporation Day presentation to celebrate Longmeadow officially getting its name put on the map. A natural friend to all animals, Johnny has many exploits involving them—from assisting his neighbor corralling escaped sheep and attempting to help his classmate overcome her fear of bees after being stung to checking on the stable animals after a lightning strike burns down a neighbor’s barn. By year’s end, his stepmother praises Johnny for learning valuable lessons and overcoming his fear of school: “You are quietly brave. You had a fear and a shame that made you want to hide away at home…but you didn’t. You went and faced the thing that made you scared.” Lak’s rough black-and-white sketches, including a charming map of Longmeadow, help to contextualize the events of this early-reader chapter book. With clear prose and dialogue, Cybulski sprinkles in many real facts about Johnny’s life and home. The choice to focus on Johnny’s childhood, as opposed to the better-known stories of who he eventually becomes, is a fruitful one that pays off by lending a humanity and realness to a story that could easily have slipped into tall-tale embellishment.

Pub Date: April 2, 2024

ISBN: 9798882560446

Page Count: 161

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: April 8, 2024

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION | CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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STEALING HOME

by J. Torres ; illustrated by David Namisato ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 5, 2021

An emotional, much-needed historical graphic novel.

Sandy and his family, Japanese Canadians, experience hatred and incarceration during World War II.

Sandy Saito loves baseball, and the Vancouver Asahi ballplayers are his heroes. But when they lose in the 1941 semifinals, Sandy’s dad calls it a bad omen. Sure enough, in December 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in the U.S. The Canadian government begins to ban Japanese people from certain areas, moving them to “dormitories” and setting a curfew. Sandy wants to spend time with his father, but as a doctor, his dad is busy, often sneaking out past curfew to work. One night Papa is taken to “where he [is] needed most,” and the family is forced into an internment camp. Life at the camp isn’t easy, and even with some of the Asahi players playing ball there, it just isn’t the same. Trying to understand and find joy again, Sandy struggles with his new reality and relationship with his father. Based on the true experiences of Japanese Canadians and the Vancouver Asahi team, this graphic novel is a glimpse of how their lives were affected by WWII. The end is a bit abrupt, but it’s still an inspiring and sweet look at how baseball helped them through hardship. The illustrations are all in a sepia tone, giving it an antique look and conveying the emotions and struggles. None of the illustrations of their experiences are overly graphic, making it a good introduction to this upsetting topic for middle-grade readers.

Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5253-0334-0

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Kids Can

Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

More by J. Torres

BOOK REVIEW

by J. Torres ; illustrated by Sean Dove

by J. Torres ; illustrated by Aurélie Grand

NUMBER THE STARS

by Lois Lowry ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1989

A deftly told story that dramatizes how Danes appointed themselves bodyguards—not only for their king, who was in the habit...

The author of the Anastasia books as well as more serious fiction ( Rabble Starkey , 1987) offers her first historical fiction—a story about the escape of the Jews from Denmark in 1943.

Five years younger than Lisa in Carol Matas' Lisa's War (1989), Annemarie Johansen has, at 10, known three years of Nazi occupation. Though ever cautious and fearful of the ubiquitous soldiers, she is largely unaware of the extent of the danger around her; the Resistance kept even its participants safer by telling them as little as possible, and Annemarie has never been told that her older sister Lise died in its service. When the Germans plan to round up the Jews, the Johansens take in Annemarie's friend, Ellen Rosen, and pretend she is their daughter; later, they travel to Uncle Hendrik's house on the coast, where the Rosens and other Jews are transported by fishing boat to Sweden. Apart from Lise's offstage death, there is little violence here; like Annemarie, the reader is protected from the full implications of events—but will be caught up in the suspense and menace of several encounters with soldiers and in Annemarie's courageous run as courier on the night of the escape. The book concludes with the Jews' return, after the war, to homes well kept for them by their neighbors.

Pub Date: April 1, 1989

ISBN: 0547577095

Page Count: 156

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

More by Lois Lowry

by Lois Lowry

by Lois Lowry ; illustrated by Jonathan Stroh

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Remembering Johnny Appleseed

“National Johnny Appleseed Day,” observed yearly on March 11 th , which some believe is the start date of planting season, celebrates the life and legacy of Johnny Appleseed.  This legendary American folk hero was born as John Chapman on September 26, 1774, in Leominster Massachusetts and died at the age of 70 on March 18, 1845, in Fort Wayne Indiana.  He became famous for spreading apple trees across the American frontier during the early 19 th century.

Libraries play a vital role in preserving, disseminating, and interpreting the story of Johnny Appleseed.  His story appeals to diverse audiences and fosters a greater understanding of American history and culture through his life and legacy and told through various forms of literature and media.  For instance, he is best known for planting apple nurseries and orchards as he traveled across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Once he planted them, he would sell or lease them to settlers, educating them on the proper care and cultivation of the trees.  While much of his folklore is based on real events, separating fact from fiction can be challenging due to the embellishments and myths that have accumulated over time.  Many stories often exaggerate his exploits and character, portraying him as a benevolent and eccentric figure.  Nevertheless, his contributions to agriculture and his role in American folklore represent values such as perseverance, conservation, and a pioneering spirit.

“National Johnny Appleseed Day” is a great opportunity for people to appreciate the significance of his contribution to American culture.  Schools and educational institutions often organize activities or lessons about Johnny Appleseed’s life and the importance of agriculture.  Libraries often contain resources such as biographies, historical accounts, primary source materials, academic journals, etc., documenting his life.  Libraries also play a crucial role in preserving these collections and may maintain archival material pertaining to Johnny Appleseed exploring his cultural significance and his legacy.  Other opportunities on this day may include planting trees, cooking delicious apple dishes, volunteering with an environmental conservation organization, or attending an educational activity.  Regardless of how you choose to spend the day, one thing is clear—his legacy extends beyond his horticultural endeavors, his story embodies values such as generosity, a simple life, and a one-of-a-kind figure in American history and folklore.

Take some time to read about the fascinating life of Johnny Appleseed by checking out these resources:

Bellevue University Collection

Johnny Appleseed Festival

Johnny Appleseed Museum

National Johnny Appleseed Pinterest Board

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Johnny Appleseed Hardcover – Picture Book, August 22, 1988

Purchase options and add-ons.

The larger-than-life story of a true American hero—John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed.

This fun picture book has been a favorite for generations. Bursting with energy and perfect for reading aloud at home or in the classroom, Johnny Appleseed is an excellent choice for storytime.

"The brief text combining legend with fact, coupled with the picture book format, makes this life of Johnny Appleseed the most accessible and entertaining one available for young children," according to School Library Journal. Steven Kellogg "is ideal as interpreter of this fascinating man. An affectionate portrayal, enthusiastically accomplished," praised Booklist

A good supplement for units on tall tales, folktales, American history, apples, and seasons! And just a fun read-aloud for sharing.

• Reading age 4 - 8 years
• Part of series Tall Tales Books
• Print length 48 pages
• Language English
• Grade level Preschool - 3
• Lexile measure 920L
• Dimensions 8.5 x 0.36 x 11 inches
• Publisher HarperCollins
• Publication date August 22, 1988
• ISBN-10 0688064175
• ISBN-13 978-0688064174
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

From publishers weekly, from school library journal, from the back cover.

The larger-than-life story of a true American hero -- John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed. Kellogg "is ideal as interpreter of this fascinating man....[His] color has never been so rich and luxuriant....An affectionate portrayal, enthusiastically accomplished." -- Booklist.

About the Author

Steven Kellogg was "moved by the simplicity, the subtleties, and the poignance of the writing in this story." He welcomed the opportunity to reillustrate it in full color. Mr. Kellogg is an award-winning author and illustrator who has created more than one hundred children's books, including The Three Little Pigs , Paul Bunyan , Johnny Appleseed , and Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett . He is the illustrator of Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town and The Baby Beebee Bird . Mr. Kellogg is a recipient of the David McCord Citation and the Regina Medal for his distinguished contribution to children's literature. He lives with his wife, Helen, in upstate New York.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins; First Edition (August 22, 1988)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 48 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0688064175
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0688064174
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 4 - 8 years
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 920L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ Preschool - 3
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.7 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.36 x 11 inches
• #31 in Children's United States Biographies (Books)
• #52 in Children's Colonial American Historical Fiction
• #92 in Children's Country Life Books

About the author

Steven kellogg.

With the same energy, humor and clarity found in his 50 books, David wows audiences at schools around the United States and beyond. David is an accomplished storyteller and a master at getting kids to think and have fun at the same time. His presentations lead children on entertaining and educational journeys that combine math, science, reading and writing. David also gives keynote presentations and workshops for educators at professional conferences.

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