As I was cleaning out my writing files, I came upon a folder containing an article I submitted to Highlights For Children magazine. Back in the day when I was first breaking into writing for children, getting an article accepted by Highlights was the Holy Grail of submission success.
Highlights didn't accept my article. But they sent me a wonderful rejection letter. Not one of the form 'It is not suited to our present needs' things. Oh, no. This rejection letter is a beauty. It's full of very specific details on what exactly was discussed by the reviewers, and how it could possibly, someday, with a little more work, actually suit their present needs. I'm posting a copy of it at the end to give props to their reviewers. They obviously spent valuable time reading my sub and giving me very valuable feedback. When's the last time you got this level of feedback on a rejection letter? Yeah, I thought so.
I'm also posting it to share their input with any of you who are submitting to children's magazines. Hope it helps.
My hat's off to Highlights. I appreciate the time and the info, even though you didn't publish my article.
To wit: here's the article I submitted:
All About Apples
On many fall afternoons you can find Nancy Jacobson leading a group of school children on a tour of her family’s apple orchard. She tells them all about apples and how they grow. The children usually have many questions, but Nancy has the answers. Nancy knows all about apples. She should – her family has owned the orchard for more than forty years.
The orchard sits on more than three hundred acres of gently rolling hills in eastern Minnesota. The Jacobson family home is still on the site. It is part of a building complex that includes a large apple storage and processing facility, bakery, and gift shop. Elsewhere on the property are strawberry fields, a pumpkin patch, and a corn maze.
Nancy’s parents and five siblings still work at the orchard. Nancy does the hiring and gives tours. Each of her brothers and sisters work at things they enjoy. One brother takes care of the apple trees. Another runs the wagon rides, gift shop and corn maze. Nancy’s mother oversees some of the baking, and her father fills in where needed. There are even some Jacobson grandchildren involved in the orchard operation.
The orchard is busiest during the fall. They harvest apples from August through October. Seven days a week, people come to buy fresh apples, pies, and donuts. Families choose the perfect pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns in the pumpkin patch. They take turns finding their way through the rustling paths of the corn maze.
“A lot of children think if you have an apple orchard, you’re busy in the fall,” says Nancy. “But we work all year round.” During the winter each of the 8,000 apple trees are pruned. Dead and crowded limbs are cut away to let in more air and light. Pruning helps the trees live longer and produce better apples.
Spring is a critical time for the orchard. Fragrant flowers appear on the apple trees. In order for apples to grow, the flowers must be pollinated by bees. “We can’t just rely on the bees that are roaming around in nature, because it is such a critical time of year for us. We bring in colonies.” They use about one colony of bees per acres, and they have 80 acres of apple trees.
“Bees are fussy creatures,” Nancy says. “If it’s wet, windy or cold, they won’t come out and work. The bees are furry. They’re after the nectar inside the base of the stem. They dive into the blossom to get the nectar and get that yellow pollen on their furry backs. They fly to another blossom and get that pollen all over their furry backs.” The pollen collects on the bees’ furry bodies and is deposited on other trees each time they land someplace new. “It’s all by accident,” Nancy says.
The orchard grows about twenty different types of apples. “A lot of the varieties we grow were developed by the University of Minnesota, so they are good cultivars for our climate,” says Nancy. “Haralson is a great apple. It is a real workhorse. It grows well here and people can use it for lots of different things.” The orchard also grows some old-fashioned varieties. “Duchess is a really old-fashioned green pie apple. The day we opened up we had people waiting in line for Duchess. They remember that’s the apple their grandmother used to make pies.”
Nancy’s parents bought the orchard when she was a little girl. She enjoyed growing up on an apple orchard. “I had my own apple tree. It was right outside the back door of the house so I could hear my mom call.” It was the perfect tree for climbing, and had some branches perfect for sitting. “I knew that tree like I knew my own bedroom,” Nancy says. “When I had a rough day at school, I could go out and climb the tree and everything was fine.”
Nancy and her brother John also enjoyed riding on the picking trailer during the harvest. “When the pickers were picking the apples, the trailer would follow along and pick up the bushel boxes. There was always an empty box in the middle for my brother and I. We’d each have our own little box we’d sit in, and they’d pick the boxes up and fill them in around us. The trailer would start out empty, then it would have a few more boxes, and a few more boxes, and then you were in the middle of a big trailer that full of boxes filled with apples. Then they would unload it, and we would go back out and do another run with it.”
Some activities weren’t so fun. One job Nancy didn’t like was hand-thinning the apples. When the apples grew to the size of golf balls, they had to be thinned by hand. Using a small set of shears, she and her siblings worked their way through the orchard, cutting away excess apples. “We left one apple for every 6 inches of tree limb,” Nancy says. This was a hot and tedious job. But it was necessary. Thinning is one way to produce the best quality apples and help keep the trees healthy.
One afternoon as Nancy finished a tour for some school children, one of the students raised his hand. When called on, he said, “Nancy, this place is all about apples!” Nancy thinks he is absolutely right. Even though there is hard work to be done year round, Nancy and her family love working at the orchard. “Growing up in this environment, it gets under your skin. You learn that work can be fun.”
Now that you've read the article, here's the rejection letter, as promised. Isn't it great?
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