The Apple Cake (2024)

3,390 reviews104 followers

May 20, 2023

Nienke van Hichtum's The Apple Cake (Het Appeltulbandje) is a sweetly entertaining and originally Dutch cumulative tale about a diminutive little old lady, about a grandmother par excellence wanting (needing) apples to make a cake for her supper and trading a basket of ripe red plums (for she does have plums, but not the necessary apples) for feathers, then the feathers for a bouquet of flowers, the flowers for a gold chain, the gold chain for a little dog, and the little dog then finally for some apples.

There are messages of both inventiveness and also being kind and compassionate to one's neighbours presented throughout

The Apple Cake (for the grandmother actually gives the gold chain she had received for the flower bouquet and which she could well have used to purchase apples at the local market to the mother of a poor and starving family without expecting anything in return, but who then gives granny the family's pet dog as a present of gratitude, and finally, the grandmother giving the little white dog to a lonely old man in exchange for apples from his fruit laden tree is also first and foremost an act of kindness, as he tells her he would rather have a dog for company than be sad and lonely). Thus, each person is helped with and by the bartering and exchanging, and in the end, granny does indeed also get her desire, a delicious apple cake (and the recipe for a Dutch apple cake, for the cake in question, is also featured on the back cover of The Apple Cake, perhaps a bit hard to read, as the font size is rather small, but still much appreciated and delicious looking, although the recipe does require a yeast dough, and is thus not as simple as a standardly North American apple pie and will also take more time, as with yeast there is of course the time necessary for the dough to rise to be considered).

Now with regard to Marjan van Zeal's accompanying illustrations, they are brightly expressive in scope, in feel, and look like they might in fact be pastels, colourfully descriptive (with many beautiful flowers), realistic, but at the same time, rather impressionistic, and very Dutch, very Western Europe countryside in theme, mostly very much an aesthetic pleasure, working exceedingly well with Nienke van Hichtum's presented narrative (although up close, the young man entirely clad in yellow to whom the grandmother gives the flowers and who gives her the golden chain does tend to appear a trifle too effeminate for me).

Three and a half stars for

The Apple Tree and the ONLY reason I have not rated the book with four stars is that personally, I find it rather majorly annoying that my copy, that my edition (published by Floris Books of Edinburgh) lists neither the original Dutch title nor the name of the translator or adapter. And sadly, this is actually an issue I have encountered rather too often with especially Floris Books (and truly, for me, there is absolutely no legitimate reason to not list the original Dutch title, and it drives me personally batty that for so many of Floris Books' children's literature translations and/or adaptations, the translators/adaptors are not listed, that they often remain anonymous, and I find this even more problematic with regard to this here book, since on the Goodreads book page, Polly Lawson is listed as translator, but her name most definitely does NOT appear in my Floris Books 2014 seventh printing of The Apple Cake).

See Also

Best Apples to Bake With

7,423 reviews225 followers

October 11, 2019

An old woman decides that she would like to bake an apple cake in this charming picture-book, originally published in Dutch as Het appeltulbandje, but finds that she is missing the apples that she needs in order to do so. Setting out with a basket of ripe plums, she engages in a series of trades with her neighbors - plums for feathers, feathers for flowers, flowers for a golden chain, a golden chain for a puppy, and (at last!) the puppy for some apples - guided each time by her kind heart, and a desire to do right by others. As the woman concludes that evening, whilst enjoying her well-earned treat: "As long as you do your best and don't lose heart then it's not at all difficult to get an apple cake for your supper."

Nienke van Hichtum, whose real name was Sjoukje Maria Diderika Troelstra-Bokma de Boer, was a late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Frisian Dutch children's author best known for her heart-warming family stories, including the still beloved

Afke's Tiental. The Nienke van Hichtum Award, which is named in her honor, is a biennial Dutch children's book prize administered by the city of The Hague. Unfortunately, this picture-book, put out by Edinburgh-based Floris Books in 1996, is, to the best of my knowledge, the only one of her stories to be made available in English. I'm not sure when it was originally published, or how it first appeared - as part of a story collection, or on its own - but this presentation of it is just lovely. The narrative itself, which follows a common folkloric theme involving a series of trades, is sweetly engaging. I particularly liked the old woman's running monologue to herself, and her reflections about the people she meets along her journey. When she gives away the golden chain, observing: "never let it be said that I enjoyed a nice apple cake while my neighbour went hungry," I wanted to cheer! The artwork, done by Marjan Van Zeyl, is just as appealing, with a gorgeously vivid palette and a wonderful impressionistic quality to it. There's even an apple cake recipe on the back cover!

All in all,

The Apple Cake is a definite winner! I hope more of Nienke van Hichtum's work is made available to English-language speakers.

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Miri

664 reviews3 followers

February 25, 2017

A sweet little old lady wants to have an apple cake for her supper, but she has no apples, only plums, she sets off with the basket of plums heading for town hoping to sell them. Along the way she encounters a woman who's husband loves plums and trades with the woman for a bunch of feathers, the old woman continues to trade items with people who need what she has, and with her generous spirit she manages to find the apples she needs to make her apple cake for supper.

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