"Award-winning journalist Dan Koeppel navigates across the planet and throughout history, telling the cultural and scientific story of the world's most ubiquitous fruit"--Page 4 of cover.

In THE COMPLETE BOOK OF BANANAS, W.O. Lessard writes to fill a void in information available to a small but growing population of the world. One interested in growing bananas as a hobby. The author is an accepted authority on the growing of bananas with twenty five years of growing experience. He is well known throughout the banana industry & is currently employed by a major South American banana company as a growing consultant. The book consists of 120 pages packed with information on history, culture, diseases & cold protection of the banana. There is a compendium consisting of a discussion of 50 varieties of bananas along with 42 color photographs. There are 11 pages of recipes gleaned from many tropical countries describing how to use bananas in every stage of maturity from green to overripe. The book is of top quality in every respect. It is hardbound with a leather cover & a high quality dust cover. It gives all the information a hobby grower needs to grow a small grove of bananas in the American sunbelt or a greenhouse. The cost of the book is $35.00. Contact person is William Lessard, 19201 SW 248 St., Homestead, FL 33031. (305) 247-0397.

What can you do with an apple? You can pick it, kick it, wash it, squash it—but don’t forget to eat it. This charming new series will show readers how to find magic and joy in the beauty of everyday life. Also available: What's a Banana?

Two monkeys learn to share.

This silly yet sophisticated picture book will make kids AND parents laugh—the perfect story for reading aloud! For fans of Strictly No Elephants A child takes a dog for a walk. At least, so the child insists. But nobody else sees a dog! Neighbors try to figure out why a child is walking a banana on a leash, while the child tries to make them understand that the banana is really a dog. A dog named Banana! But…it can’t be. Can it? My Dog Banana is a jewel of absurdity that brings to life a diverse group of characters, filled with classic charm and endless humour.

Sweet but starchy, soft but toothsome—and so easy to peel they just beg to be devoured—bananas are one of our favorite foods, found everywhere from gas station counters to Michelin star restaurants. Yet for as versatile and ubiquitous as this fruit is today, its history is a turbulent one, entangled in colonial domination, capitalist exploitation, sexual politics, and even horrific violence. Delving into the banana’s past, this book traces the complex circumstances of global modernity that perfectly aligned to grant us, often at tremendous costs, a treat we all now take for granted. Beginning with the banana’s origins in New Guinea, Lorna Piatti-Farnell follows its pathways to South East Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, binding together a millennium of history into one digestible bunch. Focusing especially on the banana’s recent past, she shows how it rose from a regional staple to a global commodity, on par with coffee and sugar. She examines the ways it has been advertised, sold, and incorporated into popular culture, moving from nineteenth-century medical manuals to cookbooks, songs, slapstick comedy, and problematic figures like Miss Chiquita. Wide-ranging but pocket-sized, Banana is a culinary and cultural account of a peculiar little fruit that is at once the icon of exoticism and one of the most familiar foods we eat.

A boy's-eye-view of the everyday brings alive all the wonder and oddity of the world inside our own heads.