Apples to Oregon

Papa is moving his frontier family of a wife and eight children from Iowa to Oregon, but his primary concern is his other rolling nursery, the hundreds of various fruit saplings and seedlings he`s packed into a pair of boxes loaded with good, wormy dirt. His daughter Delicious ( Oh, and by the way, he took us along, too ) narrates their comical battles with hailstorms, rivers wider than Texas, thicker than Momma`s muskrat stew, freezes, and droughts, and she`s usually the one who figures out how to cope with each challenge, saving her family as well as her father`s other precious cargo. The dialogue is often bouncily alliterative: `Guard the grapes! Protect the peaches!` Daddy howled. This tall tale is very loosely based on the life of Henderson Luelling, the founder of the first plant nursery in Oregon in 1847--although the boisterous family is fictitious. Endpaper maps display their route across the country. The full-color oil paintings are appropriately lively and humorous. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.