A story, an activity book [with] recipes parents and kids can enjoy together, ... a rollicking romp through badness that any kid can relish. Charming; even a bad banana can turn out good! – Alison Levy, Park Slope Food Coop Linewaiter’s Gazette, Brooklyn, NY
A wisecracking picture book on the short (shelf) life of a bunch of bruisers--with 7 yummy recipes that will save families from "I'm bored" disease. While banana characters try crazy stunts and start turf wars, this cautionary cookbook provides tasty, low-sugar recipes (including banana muffins, cookies, smoothies and pancakes--more recipes and fun at Premiobooks.com). The perfect family activity, Bad Bananas facilitates easy, funny, hands-on fun. 320 words (before recipes), book with African-American character, suggested price: $6.35
Excerpt
... they lose any chance of getting into a good pie. ... You wouldn't want this bunch near your oranges.
Professional Reviews
Horn Book/Out of the Box
Karl Beckstrand's bizarrely funny picture book Bad Bananas (Premio, June) shows how good bananas go wrong. Fresh from the grocery store, they're sweet and "conform nicely to the bunch," but before you know it they're "borrowing" the fruit bowl for joyrides and loitering in "dimly lit lunchboxes." The fair trade and organic labels of their innocent youth are replaced by tattoo-like stickers proclaiming Del Malo, Un-Organic, or Dull. When rival fruits try to stand up to these hoodlums, insults fly: "Your mother's a raisin!" Most of illustrator Jeff Faerber's illustrations style the bad apples bananas as gang-banger types or skate punks—but some go fully Dark Side, like a Darth Vader-ish villain and a pirate banana walking the plank into a frying pan.
Just when you think there's no hope—they're just a bad bunch—salvation appears in the form of banana-based recipes. Cookies, fruit salad, pancakes, and more give these bananas a second chance. I made "banana redemption muffins" (with the "optional" chocolate chips, of course) and brought them into the office. A little dense (probably from my forgetting the baking powder rather than any defect in the recipe), they were still delicious, and an excellent use for the overripe bananas stinking up my kitchen. And while I can't say my baking received "four stars from The Banana Post," I'll take an appreciative "mmm" from The Horn Book staff any day.
—Katie Bircher
ReaderViewsKids.com
“A silly book about bananas. … The book has seven recipes for things like banana bread and cookies and a smoothie. …The bad bananas make the other fruit mad. The pictures were kind of funny. Most of the recipes are pretty healthy and not really hard to make.” – Marten Weldon (age 6) for ReaderViewsKids.com (4/11) http://www.readerviewskids.com
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