All Hail the Year of the Banana: The Official Children’s Literature Trend of 2025

My sister had a baby this year and, as such, introduced me to this earworm of a song:

@hayleyandcolby

Colby does love a banana…. #babyboy #babiesoftiktok #chickenbanana #dancingbaby #fyp #happybaby #firsttimemom #7monthsold #babytrend

♬ Chicken Banana – Crazy Music Channel

---

Seems to me that it’s rather perfectly positioned. Not only was the viral hit of 2025 Steve’s Chicken Lava Song from the Minecraft movie, but bananas are also having their day. For whatever reason, call it a confluence of coincidences if you must, bananas are having a moment in picture books. As evidence, I present to you a smattering of banana-related books for kids that we all encountered this year. Please note that I am fairly certain that I missed others, so if you can think of more banana-related fare, drop those suggestions in the comments at will.

---

Board Books

Banana, Banana, Banana! by Sarah Finan

Since 2025, as I already said, is the Year of the Banana, that means that Finan’s board book, with its thick paints and clever cut-outs, is perfectly positioned to conquer the world. Gentle rhyming text explains precisely to babies why bananas are the be-all and end-all of early foods. “Bananas are my favorite treat! / I eat them up because they’re sweet.” The art, brightly colored but with a style entirely of its own, is great, but the cut-outs in the pages are clearly the star of the show. For example, in one sequence you’ve the smile on a toddler’s face that perfectly outlines a banana’s shape so that when you turn the page they fit together. I give extra points to the part of the book that asks that you not leave a peel on the ground for fear of slipping on it. With its limited color scheme, this is truly a visual feast of a board book. One, I think, a parent wouldn’t mind reading repeatedly (and, let’s face it, they probably will).

---

Just a Banana by Barney Saltzberg

We’re all about the videos on the blog today, and I thought that this little video summed up Saltzberg’s latest perfectly:

---

Picture Books

If You Make a Call on a Bananaphone by Gideon Sterer, ill. Emily Hughes

Very much in the old If You Give a Mouse a Cookie vein, only with the fascinating combination of Sterer and Hughes. I’m a big fan of the both of them. Just swap out the titular cookie for the bananaphone in this book, and you’ll find it fulfills our agenda today of banana-related literary fare. Kirkus called it, “Wish fulfillment comes via fruit-based communications and a whole lot of imagination,” which I kind of love.

---

Yellow Is a Banana by John Himmelman

I’ll confess that of my Himmelman-related options in 2025, my heart and soul belong to his incredible collection of poetry found in The Boy Who Lived in a Shell. Still, it is difficult to resist this semantic battle in which one kids says “That YELLOW is a banana,” while the other says, “This BANANA is yellow.” There is a LOT of older sister/little brother energy at work here (very Max and Ruby territory, if you know what I mean). It has perspective. It has language development. It has a PLETHORA of bananas! What not to love?

---

Hannukah Books

Banana Menorah by Lee Wind, ill. Karl West

Today, this is the SECOND book to feature a banana menorah for Hanukkah inside (the other being The Book of Candles by Laurel Snyder which is, naturally, also on this list). I have to credit Lee Wind with this book, of course, because not only is this Hanukkah title hilarious, it felt weirdly, amazingly real. I am not Jewish, but I could 100% see myself grabbing random fruits in the kitchen to form makeshift menorahs, if the necessity arose. In this story our heroine is on a lovely beachy vacation with her two dads around Hanukkah time, when it becomes evident that they both assumed that the other had paced the menorah. The enterprising kid sticks two candles in a banana and voila! Problem solved! But bananas (especially in tropical locales) have a tendency towards mush, so on the next night … granola menorah! And the night after that? Shiny foil menorah! I love the two-page reveals of each original menorah idea. There’s info at the end about making your own original menorahs (“Be careful to choose materials that will not burn,” is VERY good advice, I should think) and as Lee himself points out in his note to readers, this is a great way of coming up with a fun new family tradition.

---

The Book of Candles by Laurel Snyder

From the outset, this looks like the least banana-related book in the lot today, but don’t be fooled. There are plenty of banana-related hijinks inside. Well… one banana-related hijink. And yes. It’s another banana menorah. The book writes eight poems for the eight nights of Hanukkah. In the story, a flat tire a family so they make do by sticking candles into a banana on the car hood. I’ll give Snyder this. She’s the one who thought to come up with the term “bananukkiah.” Well played, madam. Well played indeed.

---

Easy Books

How to Drive Your Brother Bananas by Diane Z. Shore, ill. Laura Rankin

Okay, fine. This is the book that literally has nothing to do with bananas outside of the title and cover. Ya got me. Just had to include it.

---

Early Chapter Books

Amina Banana and the Formula for Friendship by Shifa Saltagi Safadi, ill. Aaliya Jaleel

Why is this called “Amina Banana”? Because it helps you to pronounce the heroine’s name (which, for a lot of people in the States, looks like it should be pronounced “Ah-mee-nah”). She may have just immigrated to America from Syria with her family, but Amina is determined to fit in. She has a helpful list on how to fit in, but soon finds that making friends isn’t quite as difficult as she might have thought. One of those cases where you read the first chapter, get worried that it’s going to be all sunshine and roses about the Syrian immigrant experience in America, and then the difficulties start to mount and it feels a lot more real. Amina in this book has to overcome her own understanding of what it will take to fit in, but there are distinct hurdles along the way. I thought it brought a fair amount of nuance to what is, at its heart, a rather simple story. Naturally my mind now wonders what a crossover book between Amina Banana and Brianna Banana might look like. In any case, this feels familiar but is doing new things with the subject matter of its own.

---

Brianna Banana: Helper of the Day by Lana Button, ill. Suharu Ogawa

Brianna, for the record, hates the nickname “Brianna Banana” which got stuck to her years ago, possibly because of her yellow hair. These days, all Brianna wants in the whole entire world is to be Helper of the Day in school. But when the new girl gets the job instead, Brianna receives something unexpected: a new friend. This struck me as a really difficult book to pull off. Brianna clearly has some kind of attention deficit issues that aren’t being addressed, and Button doesn’t shy away from how difficult she can be as a student. I got some serious Joey Pigza vibes from this book, because, like Joey, the reader is both sympathetic to Brianna (easy to do when someone is zero friends and gets picked on a lot) and frustrated with her. Unlike Joey, of course, the book is written for the early chapter book crowd and that means that the author can only squeeze in so much backstory. The fact that Brianna’s dad took off and never came back, and we hear next to nothing about her mom, makes this an exercise in succinct restraint. It’s rather beautifully done, honestly. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Brianna’s adventures, if only to see if the well-meaning adults in her school are capable of getting her the help she needs.

See Also: The sequel, Brianna Banana: Worst Surprise Ever

---

And if anyone has any middle grade fiction, nonfiction, or YA title involving long, yellow, tastyfruit to add, I do implore you to tell me.

Filed under: Uncategorized