This is a wonderful book about a monkey who needs help moving his bananas to his house in order to make banana cream pie. He asks a bunch of different animal friends to help them but none of them want to help. Eventually the aunt come back to help and they enjoy many banana cream pies together. All of the other animals see the delicious pies and want one as well, so they decide to help monkey clean up all of his banana peels. I loved this book. It was very brightly colored with beautiful pictures with an very intriguing story to go along with it. This book would be a fantastic book to use to teach about homophones and homonyms. This is a perfect example of how to teach children the different meanings and spellings of words that sound the same. ( )

Pretty much "The Little Red Hen" with different animals. I couldn't resist the word play, and it was fun, but the bright illustrations are more exciting than the text. ( )

Grades 2-4

Coffelt uses a slightly offbeat retelling of The Little Red Hen as a vehicle to help children understand homophones and homonyms better. Monkey is trying to get a load of bananas home so that he can make banana pies, and all of the animals have some reason that they can't help him with the work, but, true to form, they all show up wanting to help eat the pie. The extent to which Coffelt crams in examples of homonyms or homophones (all bolded to stand out) is admirable. If the abundance of homonyms make the story a little clunky, oh well... they definitely get the point across. And her note at the end, which differentiates between homophones and homonyms, is thorough and engaging. A useful story for many elementary classrooms, it's rounded out with bright and energetic illustrations done in oil pastels.
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Good book for introducing these language concepts to young children. ( )