The Last Apple Tree by Claudia Mills

Description: Moving to a new state, a new school, and into a house with family she barely knows is challenging for twelve-year-old Sonnet, especially when she begins to worry about Gramps’ memory issues, in this absorbing story by veteran author Claudia Mills.  Sonnet, her little sister Villie, and their mother moved to Indiana from Colorado recently to live with her grandfather after his wife died. 

Their mother is a poet but cleans houses to make actual money.  Sonnet notices her grandfather is getting forgetful, calling her mother by her deceased grandmother’s name, and his growing melancholy scares her.  She is distracted but not in a good way by Zeke, who lives nearby and is in her class at school.  Zeke was home schooled until recently and is awkward with his classmates, conscious of his vegan home and lack of fun technology.  

When their teacher assigns an oral history, both Sonnet and Zeke decide to interview Sonnet’s grandfather and, reluctantly, start working together.  Sonnet wants to follow the teacher’s guidelines but Zeke asks more insightful questions and gets Gramps talking – only some of these stories involve a family tragedy.  In the meantime, Sonnet’s attempt to make friends by joining the Green Club leads to her asking Zeke’s activist father to speak at the middle school on Arbor Day, and Zeke is terrified of being humiliated by his flamboyant parent.  These tweens have more in common than they realize but it takes an emergency to make them see each other’s strengths.

My Impression: Claudia Mills captures the stress of middle school in this story of two appealing characters from different backgrounds.  Sonnet is used to being the responsible older sister because her mother doesn’t seem to be around much.  They had little contact with her grandparents prior to moving in so she doesn’t know her grandfather well. She is terrified when he gets weepy, which makes her want to avoid controversial topics.  Zeke has grown up in a bombastic home and is embarrassed by a father who loves to argue.  All Zeke wants is some video games and a cat.  His father reminded me of my animal rights professor in law school – a brilliant guy who also enjoyed a good argument and insisted on winning. 

Sonnet’s sister Villie threatens to steal the show, although it is not her book.  Creative, friendly, and completely lacking in self-consciousness, she welcomes Zeke to their home with confidence Sonnet could use:

Then the little sister popped out of the front door, coatless, and danced up to them.  Her two short, stubby, blond pigtails had two knee socks tied onto them, like low-hanging puppy ears.

“Welcome!” she said in a low, growly voice.  “You are entering the kingdom of Socker.  I am the queen of Soccer!  So this is a queendom, not a kingdom!  Everyone who enters has to be wearing a sock!”

Zeke relaxes around Villie in a way he can’t with Sonnet, who always seems to be criticizing him.  While the reader understands her worries, Zeke is the more sympathetic character.

In a recent Zoom that was one of the book’s launch events, Mills revealed that she would have liked to write another book in verse as she did in The Lost Language (2021), but her editor persuaded her not to.  Instead, she inserted poems between the chapters that describe the old apple orchard: Gramps sold it to sell the land to pay for his wife’s medical care and just one tree survives.   The orchard was also the scene of family tragedy, newly revealed by Zeke’s penetrating questions and/or good listening skills.

This is a thoughtful book about developing friendship and complicated families, and learning to work as part of a team.  The cover is beautiful and the apple blossoms are depicted as distinctly rosy, as one would expect from a Betsy-Tacy fan. 

Publication: Holiday House, hardcover, 2024
Genre: Juvenile fiction
Setting: Present-day Indiana
Source: Library.  This is book 9 of my 20 Books of Summer.