 | Tomatoes on trial : the fruit v. vegetable showdown Author: Metcalf, Lindsay H. | |
| Price: $14.24 | ||
Summary:
In the late 1800s, American produce king John Nix just wanted to sell tomatoes. But when import taxes on popular vegetables impacted his profits, he knew he had to remedy the situation. Nix set out to prove that tomatoes, which have seeds and grow on vines, were clearly fruits. That was the claim Nix argued all the way to the US Supreme Court. With Nix on Team Fruit, and the US government on Team Vegetable, both sides slung definition after definition in an epic, legal food fight.
| Illustrator: | Fotheringham, Edwin |
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (06/01/25)
School Library Journal (00/04/25)
Booklist (07/01/25)
Full Text Reviews:
Booklist - 07/01/2025 Are tomatoes fruits, or are they vegetables? Chronicling a produce importer’s nineteenth-century lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court—and that’s now freshly topical since the case hinged on recently imposed tariffs—Metcalf leverages an amusingly told historical “FOOD FIGHT!” into a model for conducting formal debates of any sort. Inviting readers to analyze the arguments of “Team Fruit” and “Team Vegetable,” she draws on multiple original and modern information sources to present evidence supporting both sides of the question. The author admits to falling into the latter camp but, along with a set of general tomato facts, offers in the back matter rival rosters of states and countries as evidence that the controversy is far from settled—or settleable. Fotheringham catches the tongue-in-cheek tone of the narrative with whimsical portraits of stiffly posed period contestants with bristly facial hair and cutaway views of produce thrown down as examples and counterexamples. Fruitful reading. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.
