Apple Island*:
*from Apple Island or the Truth About Teachers (Click on map to visit places Bradley visited!)
Apple Island is a peanut-shaped island far out in the Atlantic Ocean. It is where all teachers from. Long ago the good teachers left the island and sailed to America where they started the first schools.
Only one brave boy, Bradley Zimmerman, has ever visited Apple Island and returned to tell the story. He traveled from the far North where the kind teachers used to live, all the way to Teacher City in the south where only crabby teachers now dwell. top
Great Hallway: The two teachers led the students across the soccer field. They came to the start of road paved entirely with speckled tiles. Nailed to an apple tree at the side of the road was a large cork bulletin board. Attached to the tree across from it were a round gray bell and an intercom speaker."Reminds me of the hallway in our school," Duncan called out. Bradley stared forward. As he passed the bulletin board he read some letters cut from red construction paper thumb-tacked to the cork : top
Great Hallway Mile 0 Rules No pushing No spitting No cuts in line No saving places No chewing gum No roller blading No skate boarding No ball bouncing No jumping rope No hop scotch No reading signs
Apple
Woods : Stretched
among the branches of a nearby apple tree, he spotted a curious-looking
spider web. Long, flat strands, clear and sticky to the touch, formed the
web. Dangling from it by another sticky strip was a peculiar plaid-colored
spider who moved up and down by reeling the strand in and out of its bottom.
“Scotch tape!” Bradley declared. “And I always thought Scotch
tape was made in factories.”
After hopping over a small brook flowing with a purple fluid that looked
like pen ink, Bradley watched a snail the size and color of a dirty softball
crawl through the crepe paper grass. The trail of cream-colored slime it
left behind quickly hardened, and when Bradley pulled up a length of this
material he found he was holding nothing less than fresh masking tape.top
Half-Pint
Dairy: Bradley
crouched behind an apple tree, on the lookout for teachers. Sure 
enough,
two of them wearing yellow overalls crouched among thecows. Each wore
a straw hat. Each had a plastic box filled with small cardboard cartons
by her side. One teacher, squatting beneath a white cow, held out a carton
and pulled the cow's tail. The cow let out a low moan that sounded like
A-E-I-O UUUUUUU as white milk squirted into the carton. When the
carton was filled the teacher closed its peaked top and started filling
another.
Meanwhile, the second teacher knelt beneath a brown cow. She also held out a carton. To Bradley's great surprise this cow squirted chocolate milk. “A-E-I-O UUUUUUU,” the cow lowed. “A-E-I-O UUUUUUU. top
Teacherville: A narrow lane took him into a shady glen. There he discovered the remains of an abandoned village. Square, white houses lined both sides of the lane. With their flat roofs caved in and large side windows smashed, the houses must have been vacant for many years. On almost every wall someone had spray-painted graffiti. top
Grand
Playground:
Bradley faced south. At the bottom of the hill stood
a chain-link fence running from east and to west.
Beyond the fence lay something he never imagined could exist. Stretching
out to the horizon was an expanse of blacktop decorated with white lines
and circles.
“It’s colossal! It’s humongous! It’s huuuuuge!” he said. “It’s...it’s the biggest playground in the universe!
"As far as he could see countless climbing structures, handball walls, basketball hoops, slides, swings, sand pits, monkey bars, baseball diamonds, tetherball poles, volleyball nets, and every other imaginableplayground apparatus rose from the asphalt. top
Mines: Mr. Janitor struck a match, and a burst of flames lit his face. He pulled a candle from a side pocket and lit it. The candlelight fell upon a dazzling collection of colors --lemon yellow, violet red, robin’s egg blue, peach, carnation pink--that covered the smooth, glossy walls, ceiling, and floor of the tunnel.
Bradley
ran his hand along one slick wall. “This mine is carved through
crayon wax,” he said.
Mr. Janitor held the candle up to the ceiling and drops of green-yellow wax splattered on the floor. “Long ago a teacher named Miss Crayon discovered you could color pictures with this stuff,” he explained “The teachers used little hollow drills to bore out millions of sticks of it. Sixty-four colors in all they mined down here.” top
Office Palace: Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! went his sneakers on the polished floor. Overhead, crystal chandeliers hung from a vaulted ceiling spangling with golden stars. Portraits of teachers lined the walls. On one side of the hall, Bradley spotted Mrs. Gross's picture, her frightening scowl and all. On the opposite wall hung a painting of kind Miss Purdy. The portrait hanging next to Miss Purdy's was also familiar. But where had he seen that teacher before? The plate underneath it read: W.T. MELON.
As
Bradley continued down the hall, he read aloud the words stenciled on
the doors. "Supply Room...Copy Machine Room...Resource Room...Thinking
Hat Closet...Lost and Found Room." But only one room caught
his interest enough to make him stop. "Torture Chamber,"
he said.
At
the end of the hall, Bradley faced a tall glass door. Taped to it was
a notice printed in purple ink: ALL VISITORS SIGN IN PLEASE
He pulled open the door and stepped up to a counter. The countertop being
a foot above his head, he stood on a stool to see over it. There he spotted
an extremely pretty woman tapping rapidly on a computer keyboard. He cleared
his throat hoping to be noticed.
top
Sh! Ravine: After a mile or so Bradley entered a narrow ravine. Steep walls, as smooth and black as chalkboards, rose on both sides of him.
"Hope I don't meet any teachers in here," he said.
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Bradley froze. The sound had come from somewhere ahead. "Must be the wind," he said.
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
"Who's there?"
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Bradley decided to experiment. He clapped his hands.
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
"It's some kind of echo," he said. "Maybe this is where teachers came up with that sound to quiet kids."
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
"Hey! I'm Bradleeeeeey!" he shouted.
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
"And teachers can't stop me!"
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! top
Crab
Apple Forest:
Bradley inspected the hard yellow fruit dangling from the gnarly limbs.“Crab
apples,” he said. “I must be in the southern half of Apple Island.”
The tree branches clawed at Bradley’s pants and shirt as he trudged on. Thick moss, identical to the green felt in his classroom, covered the twisted trunks and a chilly coffee-colored fog clung to the swampy ground. Squish! Squish! Squish! went his tennis shoes in the soft, red muck that looked and smelled like modeling clay. top
Purple
Lake: Crouching, Bradley stuck a finger into
the lake’s purple fluid. “This entire lake is filled with ink!”
he said. “I’d better be careful. My mom would kill me if I got a
spot on this shirt.”
Clear hollow reeds grew in the shallows. They gave Bradley an idea. He broke off one reed and dunked it into the lake. He held something that looked remarkably like a pen.
“Now
if I only had something to write on,” he said.
He turned toward a grove of trees behind the beach. The leaves on these trees
were white like paper and rectangular like paper. They were smooth like paper
and fluttered in the breeze as paper would do. Bradley reached up and felt
one leaf. “This is paper,” he said. Then on it, with his newly crafted
pen, he wrote BRADLEY WAS HERE in his best cursive handwriting.
top
Big Book Building: A long and tiring trek, through more crab apple woods and more modeling clay swamps, brought Bradley to an enormous red-brick building. Giant stone apples sat on each side of a broad stairway. The stairs led up to tall wooden doors, and chiseled in stone above the doors were the words:
APPLE
ISLAND BIG BOOK BUILDING
Bradley's eyes grew wide. "Imagine the number of books this humongous place must hold," he said, bounding up the stairs. top
Teacher City: Before Bradley lay the intersection of two busy roads, Teacher Boulevard and Teacher Avenue. The streets teemed with teachers. Teachers scurried in and out of the tall red-brick buildings. Teachers walked in straight rows along the sidewalks. Teachers filled the yellow buses that rattled up and down the streets, and teachers on bicycles wove between the buses.
Bradley read several billboards posted along Teacher Avenue: READING IS NO FUN! WATCH THE VIDEO MADE FROM THE BOOK INSTEAD! LEARNING TIMES TABLES IS STUPID! USE A CALCULATOR! DON'T DO IT! TEACH IT! top
S.C.H.O.O.L.: This
building, a copy of Bradley's school in America, was used by the crabby
teachers as a training ground for Operation Misteach. The
first schools were built in America by the kind teachers and the word
is an acronym for:
Small Citizens House Of Our Learning. top
More Maps!!
From Apple Island, or the Truth About Teachers Text © 1998 by Douglas Evans Illustrations © Larry Di Fiori All rights reserved
