Book Review: Banana Blitz

Book Review: Banana Blitz

Author: Florence Parry Heide

Date: 1983

Publisher: Holiday House

ISBN: 0-8234-0480-3

Length: 119 pages

Quote: “‘And it’s so nice that your friend from the apartment building will be your roommate,’ said Mom.”

Although Banana Blitz was published in 1983, its protagonist Jonah Krock is a boy of the twenty-first century. He doesn’t play sports. He doesn’t want friends. All he needs for happiness are a TV, some junkfood, and his parents off his case. His parents want him to get some exercise and have a friend.

Last summer, in the first volume, Banana Twist, Jonah met a guy close to his age whom he could visit without actually walking around the block—nerdy Goober Grube, whom he doesn’t like. While trying to get into Fairlee, the boarding school whose admissions official told him the dorm rooms were equipped with TV sets and refrigerators, Jonah quoted some of Goober’s remarks for the admissions questionnaire. Now he’s been admitted to Fairlee...and assigned Goober as a roommate. Goober doesn’t like television, and although he was looking forward to the refrigerator too, he wants to fill it with fish and yeast.

Jonah persuades Goober to watch a TV show and count the number of times the word “banana” is used in each commercial in order to win a contest. However, as in Banana Twist, the comedy has less to do with bananas than with communication. Jonah and Goober miscommunicate with almost everybody, almost all the time. The result is naturally a mess of misunderstandings (and banana jokes).

Banana Blitz is easy to read, with large clear type and short simple words. It can be enjoyed by determined second grade readers, but adults are likely to chortle over it as much as kids do.