"Just a banana.
Wait ...
this is a banana."
Barney Saltzberg does a terrific job of getting young readers to think outside the box. He encourages them to look at the world through their imagination. First up. the narrator introduces them to a perfectly-shaped yellow banana. That happens before the first flap is lifted to show a horizontal banana placed on a smiling face that has that banana for its mouth. It works. What happens next?
Open the second of ten flaps to find a yellow lizard with googly eyes, a big smile and four webbed feet. Always returning to the first image presented of a plain banana as the pages are turned, the author morphs them into a canoe, a mouse in search of cheese, a fishbowl fish awaiting its daily food ... and so on to the great delight of readers.
Both the flaps and the positioning of the banana on the pages continually change, offering some very funny responses to the questions asked and observations made. Those kids who love jokes and using their imagination to consider variety in scenarios will be pumped to read this one again and again. They will certainly be encouraged to try their hand at other interpretations of what a banana is.
Could it be that a banana is 'just a banana' ... or not? Look under the final flap to see what you think.
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