Banana, Banana, Banana

How to eat a banana: this joyous little board book celebrates the banana as a bendy treat, the ‘perfect food’ for a journey, seen through the eyes of a young reader.

The artwork is simple and bold, and the book’s appeal is enhanced by the various shapes that lead the reader through the rhyming couplets. The text suggests that having them ‘in a smoothie, through a straw’ is a great way to have them: the next line has the child’s full face, with the lenses of their sunspecs cut out for the conclusion ‘Slurp, slurp, slurp! Can I have more?’ The reader is tempted to turn the page by poking into the holes in the sunspecs. The adult sharing the book could act this out with great expression, but also could read it fairly plainly, and let the child find their own delight in ‘mash mash mashing’ the banana in a bowl, I found the final idea both enchanting and a little perplexing: the banana- shaped hole (which we saw from the previous place where someone nearly slipped on the skin) becomes part of a bathtime duck – do children eat bananas in the bath? And the final illustration suggests eating one ‘cosy and clean in my pyjamas,’ – and I can’t imagine the mess that might make!

A mixture of children in terms of age, activity and ethnicity adds the richness of this lovely, silly rhyming book, which I could imagine contributing to family sayings such as ‘I could eat them by the bunch’ for years to come.