Mr. Monkey Bakes a Cake

Starred review from May 1, 2018
Monkey + banana = recipe for delicious cake...or delicious comedy? In this first installment of a new series, the answer comes in two courses. Balancing cooking and banana-eating, bipedal primate Mr. Monkey clumsily bakes his entry for the upcoming cake show. But the route to the show contains many obstacles--and some are hungry for Mr. Monkey's precious prizewinner-to-be. Pratfall after pratfall, readers will laugh and wonder if the cake will make it to the competition in one piece. The simultaneously published companion title, Mr. Monkey Visits a School, follows the same vaudeville formula: Mr. Monkey masters a new juggling trick and shares it at a school but only after lengthy, treacherous travels. In both stories, the narrator interacts with Mr. Monkey and provides running commentary of his antics. Characters' speech is smartly confined only to interjections--"ooh," "oops," "eek," "yum," etc.--that play off the narrator's matter-of-fact delivery with expert comedic timing. Though without chapters to separate parts of the story, the text's economy of language (fewer than 90 vocabulary words and their variants) and repetition provide ample support for emergent readers. The slapstick humor is driven by Mack's bold and colorful cartoon illustrations. The humans in Mr. Monkey's neighborhood are diverse in skin tone. The cast also notably includes a tattooed, bearded bicyclist. Encore, encore for kid lit's ap-peel-ing new primate. (Early reader. 4-8)

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July 1, 2018

PreS-Gr 2-Mr. Monkey does, in fact, bake a banana cake, but that is only the beginning. After overindulging in bananas while baking, he's too full to eat the cake. He decides to take it to a cake show across town. It's a long walk filled with obstacles including a tricky road crossing, a hippie bicyclist, an angry dog, a territorial gorilla, hungry birds, and many near catastrophes. He finally arrives safely at his destination only to discover that the show is over, which seems bad until the angry gorilla shows up to make things worse. Pandemonium ensues until Mr. Monkey saves the day and makes a friend when he offers the gorilla a banana. Poor Mr. Monkey nearly makes it to the end of the story with his cake intact, but he is felled by one of the oldest jokes around-he slips on a banana peel and lands face first in his cake. Mack's third-person text perfectly narrates Mr. Monkey's adventures while his cartoon illustrations with great facial expressions and speech balloons give Mr. Monkey a voice. The use of white space, comic book-type panels, and perfect details in the illustrations really make the narrative dance. It's a great pairing with hilarious effect. VERDICT Mack has another winner with this cross between a picture book and beginning reader. Kids will love hapless Mr. Monkey and root for his success all the while enjoying his amusing near failures.-Catherine Callegari, Gay-Kimball Library, Troy, NH

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018
Grades K-1 Mack kicks off an easy-reader series with a sweet and delicious romp. Mr. Monkey?portrayed in the simply drawn, brightly colored cartoon illustrations as a furry human with a monkey's head and tail?makes a banana cake, but chows down on so many bananas in the process that he can't eat it. And so (with his noisy stomach's advice) he decides to enter it in a cake contest instead. Because of obstacles along the way, by the time Mr. Monkey arrives, the contest is over. Will there be no blue ribbon for Mr. Monkey? Never say never: a huge, angry gorilla smashes all the other cakes in a frosting-spattered hullabaloo, but then peaceably peels a ribbon off his butt and exchanges it for Mr. Monkey's last banana. Showing true nobility of spirit, Mr. Monkey proceeds to pass the ribbon on to a small, brown-skinned child who has likewise arrived late . . . and, with his next step, meets up with a fateful banana peel. Just desserts for Mr. Monkey, whose adventures continue in the copublished Mr. Monkey Visits a School.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)