Once Upon a Banana

Once Upon a Banana, by Jennifer Armstrong, ill. by David Small

            Picture Book—Wordless

            Grades PreK-3

            Rating: 5 Stars

            Summary: A monkey runs away from his juggler owner towards a fruit stand full of bananas, and from there a chaotic chain of events takes place as the juggler chases down the monkey.

            First of all, I absolutely love the idea of wordless picture books. They allow every reader to create their own story from the illustrations, and I definitely had a blast navigating the scenes of Once Upon a Banana and figuring out what was going on in my version of this story. Despite the lack of text, all of the literary elements are present, including characters, tension, mood, place—you name it. The precious expressions on the face of the monkey are hysterical. As the reader, I know that he is quite a mischievous little guy, but yet he still thinks he’s innocent. David Small gives us a birdseye view on most pages, which allows you to notice a lot of background details that add an entirely new perspective to the story. For example, I loved noticing the people that were not immediately involved in the action, as their faces are usually frozen in awe and bewilderment at what is happening down the street from them. I often found myself spending an extended amount of time on each page taking in these small details, and yet the pictures omit energy so that at the same time, I could not wait to move on and see what would happen next.

            I love how the illustrations, and really the story, start on the inside cover and continue through the title and dedication pages so that the “first page” of the story is actually the third or fourth illustration and a lot of action has already taken place. This is a neat feature to point out to young readers who may not have seen a book that does this. In the classroom, this book would also be an excellent resource for a discussion on cause and effect. In fact, I think it would be more valuable to use illustrations to talk about the basics of cause and effect rather than using a text. Finally, wordless picture books are often a great way to inspire reluctant writers by having them write the text to accompany the illustrations. This story would definitely be a good choice for this purpose because it offers so much action and detail to write about, but also because it’s a tale that I think younger students would especially enjoy interacting with.