The First Avocado by Greg Schindler

The First Avocado by Greg Schindler
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Middle Grade (8 – 12 y.o.), Historical
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

This is the true story of a family’s 1927 move from Michigan to Florida and the two years they live near Tampa. They move because the oldest boy breathed mustard gas in WWI and his lungs worsen each winter. During the eventful, seven week trip they camp nightly by the road and bathe in nearby streams. Near Tampa they live on a farm.

Flyers in Michigan promise warm winters, beautiful beaches, and a plethora of oranges in Florida. Those flyers don’t lie, but fail to mention the dreadfully hot summers, snakes, hurricanes, and the KKK.

The coming-of-age narrator of the story, Annie asks her mother some of life’s difficult questions and receives the wisest of answers. Annie and her niece, Doris, are baseball playing tomboys who insist on barging into a boys’ sport before the term “women’s lib” was ever coined. And her Dad, Fred, gets their beloved farm manager, Thaddeus, in trouble by being too nice to him.

Family is forever.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that explored difficult topics from a child’s point of view. For example, Annie had a lot of questions about how babies are made, what causes hurricanes, why grownups make so many decisions that kids don’t always understand, and why some people are prejudiced against other races. Adults have explanations for these things that a kid can’t always wrap their minds around right away, and I enjoyed comparing Annie’s understanding of how they worked versus how her parents and adult siblings would describe them.

It would have been helpful to have more character development. Annie was a tomboy who loved baseball, but I would struggle to describe her personality beyond saying that she was a kind kid who tried to see the best in everyone. This was a pattern that was even stronger for her various family members who travelled with her as there wasn’t a lot of information about whether they were introverted or extroverted, grumpy or cheerful, creative or practical, or anything else like that. As much as I wanted to give this a full five-star rating, I needed more information about the characters as people to justify that.

I loved the humor in this book. Annie and her family faced all sorts of problems on their trip to Florida and during the time they needed to adjust to southern culture once they arrived there. There were multiple times when I chuckled as I read about how they fixed their car with limited supplies, what they thought of avocados, and how they adjusted to the heat and humidity down south. Finding the funny side in the surprises of life is so important!

The First Avocado was full of adventure.