Banana Yoshimoto

Advantages: Beautiful Illustrations, Great Rhyming Verse, Toddlers will love it!
Disadvantages: NONE!

...I have a two year old son and we own almost all of Julia Donaldson\'s books. At night time, before bed my wife and I read him 3 books and he almost always picks out at least one of her books to read. Without a doubt, this is my favourite Julia Donaldson book and quite possibly my favourite bedtime book to read him. As with her other works, the story is written in rhyming fashion. Despite not being illustrated by Axel Scheffler, illustrations are nonetheless still beautiful. My little boy loves listening to this book and pointing at the items he can recognise and say, such as moon, nana (banana) and so on. The story itself is about night monkey and day monkey who are meant to be awake at opposites times of the 24 hour day. It tells the tale of the monkeys when they get woken up at the wrong time of the day and their lack... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Funny story that kids seem to really enjoy
Disadvantages: None

...***Background*** Laurence Anholt has been writing books for many years now and it's his wife Catherine who supplies the delightful pictures to go with the fantastic stories and wonderful rhymes. There are quite a number of books in this series about the cheeky chimps and this one won a gold award in the Smarties Book Awards in 2001. ***The Story*** The story starts with a hungry mother. "Mumkey is hungry, but there are no bananas in the basket. 'Which little monkeys have eaten all the bananas?' she says. Up jumps Chimp. Up jumps Zee. 'Ha, ha, ha!' 'Hee, hee, hee!'" Mumkey takes the two naughty monkeys into Jungletown to buy some more bananas and tells them to stay close and to behave themselves. They decide to start playing hide and seek though and choose some big grey stones to hide behind. They then decide to hide... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Words simple with bright interesting illustrations and speech bubbles allow your child to take part encouraging expression within their reading
Disadvantages: Book a little flimsy

.... Little speech bubbles from the actual characters in the book allow your child to become actively involved .I have to say it will have a place on my daughters top shelf for a few years to come and as for me this particular book was written as part of a series called Blue Bananas of which have different titles and authors but I will definately buy in the range again... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful