Mr. Peabody’s Apples Preview

Here’s an excellent preview of Madonna’s second children’s book “Mr. Peabody’s Apples” from today’s edition of The Times Magazine brought to you by our London correspondent MataHari

Madonna’s second children’s book, Mr.Peabody’s Apples, is as American in setting and style as the first was thouroughly English.
With it’s late Forties, small-town American setting, it evokes the highly moral world of Jimmy Stewart and It’s A Wonderful Life, of apple pie, picket fences, Little League baseball, milkshakes and- of course- of right and wrong.
Mr. Peabody is a much-loved history teacher, who gives up his Saturdays to coach the children’s baseball team. After practice, he strolls through town, always picking up an apple on his way home from outside the fruit store. Billy Little, our hero, notices that Mr.Peabody never pays for the apple and soon his friend, Tommy Tittlebottom, starts broadcasting the bad news. So we witness the spreading dark ink of a nasty falsehood and see how hard it can be to remove that stain.
As with all of Madonna’s five children’s books, the story has a strong moral message. It was inspired by a near 300-year-old story told to Madonna by her Kabbalah teacher: “The author was also a great teacher. He dedicated his life to helping others and stressed the value of love for all people,” says Madonna.

Madonna and her publishing collaborator, Nicholas Callaway, found inspiration in the children?s books and films of the Forties. They conceived the book as a “day in the life” of a small town, “zooming in” on the story in cinematic style. As with the previous book, Madonna art-directed the illustrations to the tiniest detail.

The illustrator who was chosen, Loren Long, is from the American Midwest himself. Although he painted from imagination, he says that Mr. Peabody is based on the car mechanic who lives in his town and Billy Little lives down his street.

Madonna dedicates the new book “to teachers everywhere“. Teachers have been a powerful force for good in her life. She told this magazine in an interview earlier this year, “They were amazing human beings. Some people think of home as an escape from school, but – because I lived my teachers – school was my escape from home.” She feels this story is a particular important one that people can carelessly cause great harm with cruel words, but that if we take responsibility for our actions, we can put things right again. As she puts it in her preface: “It is about the power of words. And how we must choose them carefully to avoid causing harm to others. I hope I have done justice to this story.”

Special thanks to MadonnaTribe’s MataHari