The F&Gs for Apple Countdown just arrived from my editor today! I never know when they're going to show up, so it's always a pleasant surprise. F&Gs are the "folded and gathered" pages of a children's book. They look exactly like the printed book, but without the hard covers and the reinforced binding. Instead of being glued or sewn, the pages are stapled together. (You can see the staples on the left side of the cover here if you look closely.) F&Gs are created to show to reviewers and bookstore buyers shortly before the book is published.
In this book, a class of nineteen, plus the teacher, makes twenty going on a field trip to an apple farm. Count 20 name tags, 19 kids on the bus, 14 cows and 13 ducks (10 white and 3 black), and so on. I got this idea from real life, when a second grade teacher I know took her class to an apple farm in Washington--the state that grows the most apples of all fifty states!
Apple Countdown
Joan Holub, author
Jan Smith, illustrator
Albert Whitman & Co.
hardcover picture book
isbn 9780807503980
March 2009
