Johnny Appleseed a personalized book with your child as the hero

The cider press at the edge of the village creaked and groaned as it squeezed a heap of apples into golden juice. Beside it sat a tall, bearded man in a plain brown hat, picking small dark seeds out of the leftover pulp. His name was Johnny, and everyone along the road knew him as the man who grew apple trees.

A small child had come to help. "Why do you save the seeds?" the child asked, holding up one that was wet and shiny.

"Because every seed is a promise," said Johnny, smiling. "Put it in good soil, give it time, and one day it may become a tree." The child dropped the seed into a cloth pouch, and then another, and another, while a basket of red apples sat close by.

When the pouch was full, Johnny tied it shut, hung it from his belt and picked up his small travel bundle. The child tucked the last few seeds into a pocket, and the two set off down a quiet woodland trail.

Partway along, Johnny sat down on a mossy log. He did not have a written map, for he carried one in pictures: a drawing of a creek bend, a big rock and a cabin with a curl of smoke. "Here is where we will plant," he said, tapping the cabin. The child studied the little drawings, and soon could point out the creek, the rock and the way forward.

By afternoon they reached a family cabin with an open patch of ground beside it. Johnny loosened the soil and made shallow rows with his fingers. The child knelt, pressed one seed into each row and covered it gently, like tucking a blanket over a sleeping baby.

"Not too deep," Johnny said. "Just enough to keep it snug." Row after row, the patch filled with hidden seeds, and the child's hands turned brown from the earth.

Next came the watering. Johnny gave the child a small wooden watering can, and the child carried it back and forth from the creek, sprinkling each row until the soil grew dark and damp. Then Johnny and the family built a plain wooden fence around the plot. "Hungry deer would nibble the little shoots," he explained. "The fence is a kind of promise too."

Then they waited. Waiting was hard, and the child sometimes wondered if anything was happening beneath the dirt. "Roots first," said Johnny. "The best work is often quiet."

On a bright spring day they came back, and the child ran ahead to the fence. There, in neat green rows, stood the seedlings, each with a few tender leaves. There were no apples, for these were only babies, but the child counted them anyway and found more than forty. "They grew!" the child whispered.

"They did," said Johnny. "With a little help and a lot of patience."

A neighbouring family had been watching the nursery with interest. Johnny carefully lifted one of the stronger saplings and wrapped its roots in damp cloth. The child helped hold it steady as they carried it to the neighbours' cabin and handed it over.

"Plant it where it gets sun," Johnny told them, "and give it water when the weather is dry. Fence it, too, while it is small." The neighbour thanked him warmly and promised to look after it.

On the way back, a mild breeze rustled the leaves and loosened one rail of the low fence around some growing saplings. Nothing was harmed, but Johnny shook his head kindly. "A fence only helps if it stands," he said. The child held the rail in place while Johnny tied it tight, and soon the saplings were safe again.

In the autumn, Johnny led the child to an orchard over the hill, planted long ago by other careful hands. Its old trees bent low with red and gold apples, and neighbours were already gathering there. Someone passed around a basket, and the child bit into a crisp apple that tasted of sun and rain.

Far across the fields, so small that the child had to squint, the little fenced nursery lay green in the distance. Those young trees would need years before they bore fruit.

"Someday," the child said, "there will be orchards like this one there, too."

"And someone will share the apples," Johnny said. The child smiled, held a seed in one hand and a sweet apple in the other, and understood that good things grow slowly, when many people help.