Beautiful Bananas

by Elizabeth Laird

Liz Pichon (Illustrator)

Beatrice is carrying a beautiful bunch of bananas on her head to take to her granddad. She sets off on the jungle path but unfortunately a giraffe accidentally flicks his tail and brushes the bananas into a stream. To make amends, the giraffe picks some flowers for Beatrice to take to her granddad instead. What follows is a series of events in which Beatrice loses each successive gift, owing to the inadvertent actions of various jungle animals, and is given something as a replacement gift each time. So the flowers are replaced by honeycomb, which is replaced by mangoes, which are replaced by a lion's whisker, which is replaced by a parrot's feather. As Beatrice passes an elephant, she accidentally tickles his trunk with the feather. He sneezes and blows the feather clean away. So the elephant reaches up into the trees with his trunk to procure a replacement gift for Beatrice to take to her granddad ...a beautiful bunch of bananas! This time granddad's house is just a few steps away and Beatrice manages to deliver the bananas safely.

• ISBN10: 0192729055
• ISBN13: 9780192729057
• Publish Date: 1 January 2009 (first published 5 February 2004)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 16 July 2012
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Oxford University Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 32
• Language: English

Reviews

[inlibrisveritas]

I am a sucker for beautifully illustrated kids books, and this is one that immediately called out to me.

The vibrant colors and gorgeous pictures are definitely what earned most of the stars for this book, but the story is pretty cute on it’s own. Beatrice is on her way to her grandfather’s house with a bunch of bananas, but along the way she loses them to an animal who gives her something in return…and the process repeats several times.


It is a story I’ve seen around in other forms, so if you have one like this already it might be a skip for you. It is a cute, light read that its definitely something I can see a child picking up multiple times.

Despite the slightly repetitious nature of the book I do think this one makes for a beautiful book to have on the little one’s shelves