The Last Apple Tree

When feuding neighbors Sonnet and Zeke are paired up for a class project, they unearth a secret that could uproot Sonnet’s family—or allow it to finally heal and grow.

Twelve-year-old Sonnet’s family has just moved across the country to live with her grandfather after her nana dies. Gramps’s once-impressive apple orchard has been razed for a housing development, with only one heirloom tree left. Sonnet doesn’t want to think about how Gramps and his tree are both growing old—she just wants everything to be okay.

Sonnet is not okay with her neighbor, Zeke, a boy her age who gets on her bad side and stays there when he tries to choose her grandpa to interview for an oral history assignment. Zeke irks Sonnet with his prying questions, bringing out the sad side of Gramps she’d rather not see. Meanwhile, Sonnet joins the Green Club at school and without talking to Zeke about it, she asks his activist father to speak at the Arbor Day assembly—a collision of worlds that Zeke wanted more than anything to avoid. 

But when the interviews uncover a buried tragedy that concerns Sonnet's mother, and an emergency forces Sonnet and Zeke to cooperate again, Sonnet learns not just to accept Zeke as he is, but also that sometimes forgetting isn't the solution—even when remembering seems harder.

Award-winning author Claudia Mills brings enormous compassion and depth to this novel of unlikely friendship and generational memory.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Claudia Mills has written over sixty books for children, including The Lost Language, an NCTE Notable Verse Novel, a Charlotte Huck Recommended Book, A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year, and A Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Book. She is a recipient of the Kerlan Award for her contribution to children's literature. She was a professor of philosophy for more than two decades at the University of Colorado and is now a faculty member in the graduate programs in children's literature at Hollins University. She lives in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at claudiamillsauthor.com.