Hemingway, E. (2012). Bad apple: A tale of friendship. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Readability Exile, 560L
Target Audience: JK 3-K4
Setting: The countryside
Theme: Friendship and how to deal with teasing
Characters: Apples and Insects








BAD APPLE: A Tale of Friendship is a book that I would recommend parents read to their children at an early age. Bad Apple not only displays the importance and value of friendship, but also teaches children how to appropriately deal with teasing and name calling. Mac, the main character in the book is a Good Apple. Mac shares with his friends, helps Granny Smith, and loves bobbing in his favorite pond on sunny days.

On cloudy days, Mac searches for the perfect place to take a nap. As he naps, it starts to rain. When Mac awakens, he is covered with raindrops and recalls his dream about a funny little worm tickling his head. Soon, Will the worm pops out, Mac realizes it wasn't a dream, and this is how Mac and Will met. They become best friends and do everything together. All is well until Mac takes Will to the orchard.

Upon arriving at the orchard, Mac is met with jeers from his friends. They call Mac a rotten apple and poke fun at him for having worms! So Mac and Will leave and continue their friendship alone. The next day when they return to the orchard, the same thing happens and nobody wants to play with Mac. Mac is feeling pretty bad about all this and the two of them go off on their own to spend the night together. Mac awakens to find a note from Will that Mac is a good apple, but there is no sign of Will anywhere. 

Mac is pretty sad and looks everywhere for Will. Just when he is ready to give up hope, he finds Will and their friendship continues. Mac realizes that he would rather be a bad apple with Will than a sad apple without him. As far as Will is concerned, Mac will always be a good apple to him. 

Earlier this week, I watched a documentary about bullying that was extremely insightful. Sad, but nonetheless, insightful. A bully was picking on a much smaller boy who was on his baseball team. The bully was picking on the smaller boy because of an error made during the game. When the bully knocked the smaller boy to the ground and walked away, the smaller boy snapped, took his bat out of his bat bag, swung and hit the bully in the head, and the bully died a few days later. While the smaller boy was being questioned by police, he was asked why he didn't just walk away? The boy said he never thought of that.

Perhaps if parents and or teachers would have read books like Bad Apple, he would have obtained the tools to make wiser decisions. He was a "good kid" with no prior history of trouble or violence. Because he was only thirteen at the time of the incident, he was charged as a juvenile. However, he was sentenced to fifteen years in jail which will unfortunately give him a lot of time to contemplate his bad decision. 

We need to stress to our children and students that often times the best way to beat  bullying and teasing is to just walk away. Bad Apple meets the standards of high quality literature set forth by Norton (2011).