Review and GIVEAWAY: The Banana Police

The Banana Police, by Katy Koontz.

Eating all the extra bananas was [the elephants] special job, and they did a very good job indeed.

But having a herd of elephants roaming around town wasn't always easy. The elephants jammed the aisles at the supermarket. They also snored so loudly that they kept half the townspeople awake at night.

And they always sat in the front-row seats at the movies. Have you ever tried to watch a movie when a bunch of elephants are blocking the screen?

I don't usually review children's books on this blog, but this one sounded very cute, and indeed it was. The townspeople hate having so many elephants in their town, but they also have a big problem, and when they lure the elephants away from town, that problem intensifies.

Official synopsis:
Deep in the jungle is a town where people happily co-exist with elephants—until the townspeople become increasingly annoyed with their lovable, lumpy neighbors. After all, they snore loudly, hog the best seats at the movies, and block all the aisles in the supermarket. Who needs that? When Mayor McFroontz calls on the Elephant Police to devise a clever scheme to get the elephants to leave, the town ends up buried in all the extra bananas the beasts usually eat. The mayor then calls on the Banana Police to deal with the bananas, but it’s the townspeople themselves who finally get rid of them. Everyone ends up learning—immediately, if not sooner, as the mayor is known to say—just how vital those pesky pachyderms really are. The unspoken message is about the value of peaceful co-existence and cooperation between inherently different groups.
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This book was extremely silly and also very fun. It would be a good book for parents to read to their children, and I would say that children of all ages would most likely like this picture book. The Banana Police try very hard to get rid of the bananas, but the townspeople need their elephants back - and originally they tricked the elephants to get them to leave town! The Mayor isn't helpful either - there are so many bananas that the sun is blocked in the sky, and he thinks it's night and thus has fallen asleep.

The townspeople even try to think up some unconventional ways to eat all of the bananas, including banana pizza! Yikes.

The message in the book is good for kids to learn, also - that all types of groups (elephants and people, in this example) can learn to "coexist" and live together despite their differences.

Thanks to the author, one of my lucky readers will win a copy of The Banana Police! Enter via the Rafflecopter form below. Contest will end on Friday, June 14th, at 11:59pm EST, and winner will be emailed on June 15th and have 24 hours to respond to my email, or an alternate winner will be chosen. U.S./Canada only.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


*Disclosure: I was given an e-copy of this book for reviewing purposes. The opinions expressed here, however, are my own.