Author's note:
When he was around ten years old, my son, Eli, came in from our backyard, all frustrated and flustered because a ball he tossed up in the air got stuck in our apple tree. After helping him out, I ran to my computer to write this cumulative tale about the absurdity of a boy who keeps getting objects stuck in a tree and continues to throw up other things to get them un-stuck, only adding to his troubles. In the end, the boy climbs the tree and shimmies and shakes until everything comes loose, but then he's "stuck, real stuck, way up, in the middle of the apple tree." Illustrations by the meticulous Sher Sester show the humorous accumulation of objects in the tree, as well as the little boy's clever solution to his dilemma at the end.