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Summary
Summary
Curious George meets Mr. Bean in this adorable new picture book series from author-illustrator Jeff Mack that follows the loveable Mr. Monkey on his wacky adventures.
Mr. Monkey bakes a cake.
He can't wait to win a ribbon!
But first he has to carry it to the contest.
What could possibly go wrong?
Author Notes
Jeff Mack has written and illustrated a long list of award-winning picture books, chapter books, and early readers, including the Clueless McGee series; the Mr. Monkey series; Good News, Bad News ; Hush Little Polar Bear ; Duck in the Fridge ; Look! ; and Dog Gets a Pet . He lives, works, and sometimes monkeys around in western Massachusetts. Visit him at JeffMack.com.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
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. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
In both comedic stories, Mr. Monkey gets into lots of trouble but ultimately prevails in his goals. The spare early-reader texts appear partially in speech bubbles. Mack's cartoony digital illustrations, a mix of vignettes and full spreads, help tell the stories and add elements of slapstick; Mr. Monkey and his antics take center stage, but there's notable effort at inclusion and multiculturalism in the human casts. [Review covers these Mr. Monkey titles: Mr. Monkey Bakes a Cake and Mr. Monkey Visits a School.] (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Monkey + banana = recipe for delicious cakeor 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 obstaclesand 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) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
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.--Peters, John Copyright 2018 Booklist