This is a book of silly talk. It doesn't pretend to be anything else. And yet it is an extraordinary creation, in which author and artist speak to children in a very special way. The fanciful nonsense and marvelously intricate pictures are full of sly subtleties and happy surprises for eye and ear.

It is a book of absurd delights, of tiny, fey graphic details, of captivating scenes and lyrical phrases that stretch the imagination. Children will return to it again and again for new meanings, new images, new responses.

As a former political affairs writer and a present space program administrator, Julian Scheer has dealt with some of the most sophisticated facts in the adult world. Yet, for him, the play of a child's mind is even more marvelously far out than space-probing. With a poet's awareness, he recognizes children's instincts for relating nonsense and natural wisdom. He often exchanges silly talk with his own and other children, and out of that offhand play grew the extravaganza of Rain Makes Applesauce.

From the dust jacket