The book contains a moral tale, inspired by a 300-year-old story by Rabbi Baal Shem Tov, that Madonna had heard from her Kabbalah teacher.

In 2003, American singer Madonna signed a contract with Callaway Arts & Entertainment and released her first children's book as an author, The English Roses, which was translated into 42 different languages over 100 countries.

She explained that Mr. Peabody's Apples was inspired by a 300-year-old story by rabbi Baal Shem Tov that she heard from her Kabbalah teacher, and wanted to share the "essence" of it in her second release.

An article in The Times described it as evoking "the highly moral world of Jimmy Stewart and It's a Wonderful Life, of apple pie, picket fences, Little League baseball, milkshakes and—of course—of right and wrong".

[6] For illustrating Tommy Tittlebottom as the main antagonist, Long used local resident Jonathan Whitney as a model, after seeing his mischievous nature, comparing him the cartoon character Dennis the Menace.

"You'd think that a celebrity with Madonna's notoriety [...] wouldn't need a centuries-old story to inspire her to write about the value of truth and the pain that comes with gossip that spreads like wildfire," the reviewer concluded.

Donahue found the story to lack depth unlike the previous release, The English Roses, and declared Mr. Peabody's Apples as "a dreary, heavy-handed tale" with a "pedestrian and predictable" message.

She found Madonna's second endeavor to be "neither bouncy nor flirty", rather described it as "dour and joyless, despite the pretty masculinity of Loren Long's Norman Rockwell-style illustrations.

Jenkins noted that children were depicted in the book as " passive receptors of adult wisdom, but here, the misguided semi-protagonist ends up in a guilty, never-to-be-redeemed limbo for his relatively innocent crime".

[26] A review in the Publishers Weekly was critical of the story, but praised Long's illustrations, describing them as "lushly nostalgic gouaches, with their robin's-egg blue skies, bountiful golden farmlands and working men in straw hats and rolled sleeves, pay homage to the rural paintings of Thomas Hart Benton.

"[27] Similar thoughts were echoed by Tim Adams from The Guardian, who believed that the story was saved by "Long's glorious illustrations which cast Norman Rockwell light on Mad magazine faces".