Love, Like Apples - Jeff Zentner
Season 11 Episode 20 | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Jeff Zentner discusses his novel LOVE, LIKE APPLES.
Growing up in rural Tennessee with an abusive father, Tiller Loomis finds hope through the kindness of his older brother. After tragedy strikes, he discovers a passion for puppetry that leads him to 1970s New York and a PBS children's show. There, Tiller finds purpose, a chosen family, and the chance to build the life he never imagined.
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A Word on Words is a local public television program presented by WNPT
Love, Like Apples - Jeff Zentner
Season 11 Episode 20 | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Growing up in rural Tennessee with an abusive father, Tiller Loomis finds hope through the kindness of his older brother. After tragedy strikes, he discovers a passion for puppetry that leads him to 1970s New York and a PBS children's show. There, Tiller finds purpose, a chosen family, and the chance to build the life he never imagined.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(keyboard clicking) (electronic swooping) (bell dinging) (upbeat music) - Hi, my name is Jeff Zentner.
This is my book "Love, like Apples."
(upbeat music) "Love like Apples," it starts in 1960s east Tennessee with my main character, Tiller Loomis, who through a series of tragic circumstances, finds himself getting into puppetry of all things.
That path takes him to 1970s New York City with all of the grit and the grime and the graffiti and the glamour where he gets a job on a puppet show for teenagers.
So this book was near and dear to my heart as a young adult author in that I was able to write about the people who create art for teenagers and the unique joys and heartbreaks that come with that whole enterprise.
(upbeat music) It all came from a visit I paid to the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta several years ago, and it got me thinking about now from the vantage point of adulthood, what kind of people go into this sort of art for kids?
What kind of gentle, goofy, kooky people become puppeteers?
(upbeat music) Main character Tiller grows up working on an apple orchard in east Tennessee, and there's a part in the book where he's talking about one day his brother and he were on a break sitting in the shade of an apple tree, and his brother was marveling at the fact that apples arise from these improbable circumstances.
And Tiller is reflecting on how love is like apples in that way, that it arises from these improbable circumstances.
(upbeat music) I love to see the sweep of a life.
I love to see the way that our youth, and particularly our young adulthood, shapes our personality, how it informs who we are later in life.
"Love like Apples" is my love letter to the people who create art, to art making lives bigger, to the places and to the people, and to the eras that I love.
(upbeat music) Thank you for watching "A Word on Words."
I'm Jeff Zentner, and keep reading.
(upbeat music)
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A Word on Words is a local public television program presented by WNPT