Das Apfelmännchen

Author text
Janosch, born 1931 in Zaborze/Upper Silesia, trained as a blacksmith and locksmith after the war, worked as an unskilled worker in a textile factory after his resettlement and began his artistic career in Munich in the 1950s. In the meantime, he has become internationally famous as an illustrator, storyteller and novelist with over a hundred books of his own for children and adults. He has received many prizes for his work, including the Prix Jeunesse, the Prix Danube and the German Youth Literature Prize/Picture Book. Janosch lives and works on Tenerife.

Flap text
A man has an apple tree that never blooms, while the apple trees all around are in full bloom year after year. The man is very sad about this and thinks: "If only my tree would bear only one apple! Spring comes, and the tree actually does blossom. It becomes an apple that grows and grows until it is so big that the man has to carry it on his back to the market. But nobody wants to buy the apple. There's an insatiable, terrible dragon threatening the whole country. Now the giant apple is presented to him to eat, the dragon greedily jumps on it and suffocates. This way everything turns out for the best: The country is saved, the man is rid of his apple and in the future he will only dream of small apples.