The Year Money Grew on Trees Order Online:
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A 2010 - 2011 Junior Library Guild Selection "The Year Money Grew on Trees yields a harvest of riches, not only as a wonderful story of one boy's resourcefulness but as a humorous and insightful portrait of a community. Take a bite!" - BookPage (TOP PICK) "Jackson tells his own story, at once trusting and skeptical, optimistic and despairing. Hawkins has created an enormously appealing character and an engaging plot. . . Surprising and absorbing." - Kirkus Reviews "Set in New Mexico in the early 1980s, Hawkins’s children’s book debut is rich with details that feel drawn from memory (an engineering professor who worked on his family’s orchard as a child, Hawkins also contributes schematic line drawings), and Jackson’s narration sparkles. His hard work, setbacks, and motivations make this a highly relatable adventure in entrepreneurship." - Publisher's Weekly "Between the math, the growing, and the people skills, this is a unique book, and one where readers will learn something right along with Jackson." - Booklist Summary
From the book cover: Jackson Jones is surrounded by 300 wild apple trees and
he needs to make them grow apples -- thousands and thousands of them.
He convinces his sisters and cousins to help, but what do they
know about pruning, irrigating or fertilizing?
How can a group of kids fight killer frost and apple loving
insects? And even assuming they
can make the apples grow, how can they pick and sell enough of them in
time?
The story takes place in 1983, not that long ago, but life was pretty different. Computers, the internet, and cell phones were years away. If you needed information, you had to go to a library or an encyclopedia. 1983 was a huge year for music with the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller album and the growing popularity of MTV - when they were still playing music videos. Specific songs that were popular and mentioned in the book are Billie Jean, Beat It, We've Got Tonight, Come on Eileen, and Little Red Corvette. Network television shows were also very important to most kids during that time. Some of those that were especially popular and cited in the book were The A-Team, Diff'rent Strokes, and The Love Boat. Money comes up a lot in the book and provides a way for the characters to track their progress when picking and selling apples. Earning $8000 is one very important goal, which seems like a lot for the group of kids involved. In 1983, that kind of money could buy way more than it would today. The equivalent in 2010 money would be $17,200.
Other notable vehicles include Mrs. Nelson's Caprice Classic, the station wagon used for selling apples, and Jackson's dad's 1964 Plymouth Barracuda. The Barracuda was a strange looking car with a huge rear window.
While the temperatures is still cold, most trees could use some pruning and fertilizing to stimulate them. If the weather is right, a big display of spring blossoms will be transformed into tiny little apples.
One of the worst jobs when raising apples is spraying them with poison to keep away worms and insects. The pesticides can make you feel queasy, but without them, a lot of the crop gets infested. Natural methods for preventing pests, like relying on ladybugs, are appealing, but ladybugs can be hard to control and predict.
Most supermarkets sell many varieties of apples with different tastes and textures. In the book, Jackson's orchard produces both Golden Delicious (a very soft, sweet apple) and Roman Beauties (a firm and tart apple). Characters
Illustrations There were some drawings that were made that didn't eventually get used in the book. Below is one example. It is supposed to illustrate what $8000 would look like in different forms of currency. This was the amount of money the characters in the book were trying to earn, and in the end, they have to sort through lots of coins and bills of every kind.
Apple and Money Math
"Set in New Mexico in the early 1980s, Hawkins’s children’s book debut is rich with details that feel drawn from memory (an engineering professor who worked on his family’s orchard as a child, Hawkins also contributes schematic line drawings), and Jackson’s narration sparkles. His hard work, setbacks, and motivations make this a highly relatable adventure in entrepreneurship." - Publisher's Weekly "Between the math, the growing, and the people skills, this is a unique book, and one where readers will learn something right along with Jackson." - Booklist "Jackson tells his own story, at once trusting and skeptical, optimistic and despairing. Hawkins has created an enormously appealing character and an engaging plot. . . Surprising and absorbing." - Kirkus Reviews The Year Money Grew on Trees chosen as a Junior Library Guild selection for 2010-11 Release date set for The Year Money Grew on Trees - September 6, 2010 |
The
book is set in northwestern New Mexico, between the towns of Shiprock and
Farmington - near the famous Four Corners Monument, the only place in
the United States where four states meet.
This is an arid part of the country filled with plateaus. There
are large deposits of coal and natural gas buried underground.
Getting anything to grow requires pulling water from the San Juan River,
which forms a snaking green line through the region.
The
different vehicles used throughout the book play very important roles.
Most significant is the tractor that allows the characters to haul
things around and get to the supply store. The tractor drawn on
the book's cover and on the interior pages is modeled after the Ford
Model N - a very famous tractor that was produced for decades.
The
central activity in the book is, of course, raising apples. Apple
trees naturally produce apples, but humans can do many things to help.
The characters in the story have to discover these things as the year
goes along and the weather changes.
In
New Mexico, apple trees need lots of water, which means irrigating every
few days. This is usually done using ditches and canals.
Sometimes siphoning pipes are used - as explained in the book.
Picking
apples is the most labor intensive part of the process. A large
percentage of the apples are high on the trees and require ladders to
reach them. Apples are usually put in bushel boxes which can hold
about 100 apples. In the story, Jackson and his sisters and
cousins need to pick about 100,000 apples.
Much
of the book's setting was based on the author's childhood experiences
and many of the characters are based on relatives and people he knew.
At its heart, the story is really about family relationships.
Jackson and his sisters and cousins go through a challenge that binds
them together. Those kinds of links only happen with shared goals
and shared struggles.
