Beyond The Pawpaw Trees

It all began on a lavender blue day—the kind of day when anything can happen. It was on such a day that Anna Lavinia’s father saw a double rainbow and went chasing after it. And it is on such a day that she and her cat, Strawberry, set off on their journey beyond the walled garden where the pawpaw trees grow, to a place where the buttercups bloom pink and the laws of gravity don’t always apply. Here Anna Lavinia will test her mother’s advice “Never believe what you see,” against her father’s wise words “Believe only what you see,” and just maybe she’ll finally be able to use the mysterious silver key her father left behind when he went chasing after rainbows. Beyond the Pawpaw Trees is a tour through a land as strange and wonderful as Oz, filled with people as delightfully batty as any in Alice’s looking glass. It is a place to return to again and again, beautifully brought to life in Palmer Brown’s fanciful words and intricate, sugar-spun drawings.

The largest edible fruit native to the United States tastes like a cross between a banana and a mango. It grows wild in twenty-six states, gracing Eastern forests each fall with sweet-smelling, tropical-flavored abundance. Historically, it fed and sustained Native Americans and European explorers, presidents, and enslaved African Americans, inspiring folk songs, poetry, and scores of place names from Georgia to Illinois. Its trees are an organic grower’s dream, requiring no pesticides or herbicides to thrive, and containing compounds that are among the most potent anticancer agents yet discovered. So why have so few people heard of the pawpaw, much less tasted one? In Pawpaw—a 2016 James Beard Foundation Award nominee in the Writing & Literature category—author Andrew Moore explores the past, present, and future of this unique fruit, traveling from the Ozarks to Monticello; canoeing the lower Mississippi in search of wild fruit; drinking pawpaw beer in Durham, North Carolina; tracking down lost cultivars in Appalachian hollers; and helping out during harvest season in a Maryland orchard. Along the way, he gathers pawpaw lore and knowledge not only from the plant breeders and horticulturists working to bring pawpaws into the mainstream (including Neal Peterson, known in pawpaw circles as the fruit’s own “Johnny Pawpawseed”), but also regular folks who remember eating them in the woods as kids, but haven’t had one in over fifty years. As much as Pawpaw is a compendium of pawpaw knowledge, it also plumbs deeper questions about American foodways—how economic, biologic, and cultural forces combine, leading us to eat what we eat, and sometimes to ignore the incredible, delicious food growing all around us. If you haven’t yet eaten a pawpaw, this book won’t let you rest until you do.

Anna Lavinia’s father wanted her to have another point of view, so what did he do? He made a peephole in the garden wall. But he couldn’t have known that this new view would lead Anna Lavinia all the way to the upside-down mirror land that lies on the other side of the pond. Here Anna Lavinia meets Toby, who explains that on the other side, instead of gravity, there’s something called “the tingle,” which feels like “the tickle that comes before a sneeze, or the thrill that comes when the knot in a ribbon just begins to loosen,” and allows for floating and spectacular feats of tree-climbing (but mind your furniture doesn’t drift away!). Toby introduces Anna Lavinia to a variety of wonders and oddballs, including an uncanny fortune-teller, a turtle with a jungle on its back, and Aunt Cornelia, who’s never quite recovered from the disappearance of a certain young man into Anna Lavinia’s world a very long time ago. The Silver Nutmeg continues the adventures begun in Beyond the Pawpaw Trees, and features loads of sense, a little nonsense, and more charming verses from Anna Lavinia’s favorite book of rhymes. Best of all, fans of Palmer Brown’s intricate drawings will find every page a delight for the eyes

A grandfather clock makes a lovely home for a family of mice—if you don’t mind the occasional clang. And here Hickory lives with his parents, his brother, Dickory, and his sister, Dock. But Hickory is a restless, fearless mouse, and he longs to be on the move, to breathe the sweet air and nibble on the wild strawberries of the fields. So one day in early spring, with the smells of honeysuckle and clover guiding him, he strikes out on his own. Soon he discovers that a meadow can be a lonely place, even with all its beetles and caterpillars. It’s not until Hop the grasshopper comes around that Hickory finds a true companion. Hop warns him, though, that when the days get shorter and the goldenrod begins to fade, the “song she sings will soon be done.” How Hickory and Hop confront and eventually accept the end of summer forms the core of Palmer Brown’s poignant story. Hickory is a story of friendship and love on par with Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree or E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. It is also a field guide to the common plants and flowers of spring, summer, and autumn, all beautifully rendered in Palmer Brown’s most colorful and joyous drawings.

“What are you doing, dear?” “It’s a secret.” “Secrets are better if you share them a little. So tell Mother why you look so sad on Christmas Eve.” “I am wondering what to give—someone—for Christmas.” So begins the story of a little mouse’s search for a very special gift for a very special person. Nothing seems just right until the little mouse realizes that the best present of all is already at hand. Palmer Brown has given us something special for Christmas—or any day—an entrancingly lovely story, filled with the true spirit of the holiday season.