Why Did the Monkey Cross the Inlet? Monkey Goes Bananas by C. P. Bloom

Monkey has a problem. He's on one side of the ocean inlet and a tree with a huge bunch of ripe bananas is on the other side. How to get across THE WATER?

He sticks one toe in. Hmmm! Not too bad! He start wading across. Not too deep.

But then he meets something no one wants to meet in the sea.

THE SHARK!

Zip! Monkey is back on the bank. What to do?

He tries stilt walking across the inlet. He laughs at the shark until...

... his stilts go down in a hole and he drops down into shark-bite territory.

Zip!  Back to where he started. Monkey gets his fishing gear and baits the enormous hook for a big catch.

CHOMP!

Suddenly Monkey sees that hauling in The Shark is not a good plan. A Land Shark is not what he needs. But he can't give up until he gets his BANANA.

Back to the drawing board. Monkey decides it's time to put some physics on his side. He fashions a lasso and twirls it across the inlet, snagging the whole banana tree! He wraps his end of the rope around another tree, pulley-style, and hauls until the banana tree bends just within his reach.

But just as Monkey snags his Banana, WHAM! The tree snaps back and leaves Monkey and Banana dangling just above Shark's jaws.

Now...who's going to enjoy a snack today?

C. P. Bloom's tidy tale, The Monkey Goes Bananas (Abrams Books, 2014) is a silly-giggle-getting, almost-wordless story. Peter Raymundo's high-res illustrations turn this slight  text into a funny but epic account of survival of the, well, luckiest!  Using comic-strip frames and skillful cartooning, Raymundo plays with perspective and page-turn drama to make this one perfect for preschool and beginning reader fare. Slapstick and sight gags are put to good use here for both story circle time and read-alone time. "Kids will jump right into this rip-roaring flip book—paced tale," says School Library Journal.