This is about Golden Delicious:  A Cinderella Apple Story, my newest book.  This detail sheet was released by the publisher in fall of 2008. 

Golden Delicious
A Cinderella Apple Story
Written by Anna Egan Smucker
Illustrated by Kathleen Kemly

Paul and Lloyd Stark, owners of the Stark Bro’s Nursery in Missouri, were looking for the perfect apple. It would be sweet and juicy. It would bring them fame and fortune, and would be crowned Queen of the Apple World! Box after box arrived from farmers who were sure they had grown the perfect apple, but none of the apples was quite right.

Meanwhile, many miles away in the hills of West Virginia, Anderson Mullins was inspecting his new farm. It had been a hot summer and everything was dry as dust. He certainly didn’t
expect to find a glossy, green-leaved tree loaded with shining yellow apples.

When the Stark brothers received Mullins’s yellow apples in the spring of 1914, they were astonished—the apples tasted so crisp and delicious! Was this the apple they had been looking for? Paul Stark set out on a thousand-mile journey to see this marvelous tree for himself.

Based on real events, this story of how the Golden Delicious apple came to be is perfect for discussions on nature and growing fruits and vegetables. Kathleen Kemly’s detailed, cheerful art creates the perfect setting for Anna Egan Smucker’s charming text. The author lives in West Virginia. The illustrator lives in Washington State.

Golden Delicious
A Cinderella Apple Story
ISBN 13: 978-0-8075-2987-4
$16.99 • Age Levels: 6-8 • Grades: 1-3
Pub. Date: September 2008
Pages: 32 • Size: 8 x 10
Illustrations: Full color
Hardcover Binding

Thanks Booklist!  This review for my Golden Delicious book appeared in July of 2008:

This lively, true tale is set in the American heartland more than 100 years ago. The Stark brothers dream of cultivating the perfect new apple in their Missouri nursery, and farmers send them floods of varieties to try, but even fruits that look like royalty do not taste good. Then a poor farmer in the hills of West Virginia finds a new tree with Golden Delicious apples in his field, and he sends the fruit to the Starks.

At first the brothers are dismissive of the yellow apples until they taste them and find what they’ve been searching for.They rush by train and on horseback, find the tree, and graft twigs onto their own apple trees. Since then, Golden Delicious apples have become known as the queen of the apple world and billions have been harvested. A note fills in the botany, including how grafting works, and the folksy, colored-pencil illustrations, shaded with lots of earthy golds and greens, show the ordinary people who find glowing surprise.



-Booklist