Cherries and Cherry Pits

I think this is a brilliant and diverse children’s book that is incredibly unique. The main character is an African American girl named Bidemmi who has an imagination that runs wild. Her thoughts and artistic skills take her to different places and she is able to come up with several stories relating to cherries and spitting out the pits. Her character is inspiring for minority children who want to express themselves through art and storytelling. This book is educational while also being a great source of entertainment. For example, this book teaches sequencing of events by describing step by step how to plant a cherry tree. This book also teaches children not to give up on their dreams, which is the most valuable lesson of all. When show more the cherry tree would not grow cherries, Bidemmi was patient, and eventually her patience paid off. The plot of this story was interesting because it consisted of many small stories instead of one that is followed throughout the book. Each of the small stories had miniature conflicts and points of suspense, but were all centered around the same theme; cherries and their pits. The illustrations look like they were painted by an elementary school student, which can be inspirational for young artists. They will see that a child’s artistic style is good enough to be published in a book, which will encourage them to draw more and let their own imaginations run wild. While this book is engaging, some of the pages have too many words to keep the average first or second grader’s attention. This is the only aspect of this book that I think could have been improved, because overall it is a great read and I would suggest it for any elementary school classroom. show less

37 months - This is a great story. I love how the little girl draws and tells stories just like O does. And I love how all the stories are interconnected through cherries... Great ending with a nice sense of community and family. Oh and O enjoys this story too. We've read it many times and so thankful that a friend suggested it and that day I spotted it in the thrift store. SCORE!

Cherries and Cherry Pits is about a little girl who tells stories to her friends by drawing them pictures and talking. All of the stories within the book Cherries and Cherry Pits involve cherries and people in the main characters neighborhood. I like this book because of its unique illustrations and the way it weaves multiple stories into one because the main character is a story teller. This book is appropriate for grades PreK-4 and would be perfect in a unit where the theme was learning to write and/or illustrate your own stories or in a unit focused on multicultural literature.

This review also appears (with pictures) on my blog.

The book opens:

Bidemmi lives on the floor above me. We visit back and forth a lot. Bidemmi loves to draw, so when she opens the door I'm often standing there with a marker of some kind or color she doesn't have yet.

The narrator spends the rest of the book with Bidemmi, who tries out her new marker. As she draws, Bidemmi tells stories about what she's drawing. "THIS is the door to the subway..." she begins, and tells a story about a man who brings a bag of cherries home to his children, which they eat, and spit out the pits.

Then another picture, and another story: "THIS is the train seat. And THIS is a tiny white woman sitting on the train seat..." begins a story about a woman who show more returns to her little one-room home with a bag of cherries, which she shares with her pet parrot, and they spit out the pits.

Another picture, another story: "THIS is a shoelace. And THIS is a running shoe. It's going to be purple and white..." begins a story about a boy (who "looks a lot like my brother", "is tall like my brother", "has glasses like my brother", "And when he smiles you can see the space between his big front teeth like my brother's.") who brings a cherry home to his little sister, and warns her not to forget to spit out the pit.

Finally, she begins another picture, and another story, to tie them all together: "THIS is me. And THIS is my station. I have to walk up the stairs one at a time..." begins a story about Bidemmi buying a bag of cherries, and eating them on her way home--and saving the pits. When she gets home, she plants the pits, which grow ever so slowly: "And all the time, cherries will be growing right under these leaves, so tiny and green no one even notices them. But I work hard. I come out every single day to chase away the blue jays that are trying to steal the cherries. I chase away the dogs that try to use the yard for their business and the kids who try to carve initials on the tree."

Finally, the cherries are ripe, and her neighbors come out: "There are enough cherries for every single one of them. And even for their friends from Nairobi and Brooklyn, Toronto and St. Paul, who come down in these airplanes." They eat the cherries and spit out the pits and "THIS cherry pit and THIS cherry pit and all the cherry pits start to grow until there is a whole forest of cherry trees right on our block."

This is a lovely little picture book. The frame story is illustrated in watercolors, and the drawings that Bidemmi makes to illustrate the stories she tells are done in marker. The book actually ends with a nice picture of watercolor-Bidemmi standing beside marker-Bidemmi, which I should have scanned, but didn't. Sorry! I do hate opening books up wide to scan them, and I believe I've abused this one enough.

Anyway, this was a fun read, and good for me since I needed something simple and pleasant, after the last couple of books I've read. Picture books are wonderful, since they're exactly what it says on the tin: art and stories together. Something you can enjoy in several different ways, and short enough to read whenever you like, too!

Cherries and Cherry Pits can be had quite cheaply, so if it sounds like your kind of book, do pick up a copy. show less

Cherries and Cherry Pits by Vera B. Williams is another of picture books included in my daughter's text book. She likes to check out the original books to see the illustrations, as the text book only includes a few of them.

The narrator of the book lives in an apartment with Bidemmi, a girl who loves to draw. The narrator brings her different colors to see what she will do with them. Bidemmi as she draws always tells a story to go with what she's creating.

Cherries and Cherry Pits is Bidemmi's story about eating cherries on the subway and saving the best pits to plant. Her plant grows into a proper tree and soon she can share fresh cherries with all the people in the apartment building and surrounding neighborhood block.

There's an element show more of magical realism to the story too. Although everything is told as Bidemmi draws it, when her story ends, there's a picture of what appears to be her story come to fruition. Whether her story is autobiography or whether the cherry tree has grown through the magic of story telling, though, is left to the reader's imagination. show less

I adored this book as a kid. I wanted so much to be as creative as Bidemmi. I still get swept up in it as an adult.

This book is very colorful and makes you really look at the details in the pages. This was kind of a boring book for me to read, but I understood the message it was trying to get through. The genre for this book would be a fiction book. Cherries and Cherry Pits theme would be imagination. This can relate to children as their mind is so full of ideas. When Bidemmi starts drawing, she just draws whatever comes to her mind, then makes up stories about that drawing. I see that with my friend's children and the children I work with. I can connect to this story because even though I am older now, I think that imagination should never really go away.