Banana

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Because Panama disease was permanently making fallow so much of its existing holdings, the fruit companies had a continuous need for new land, according to John Soluri, author of Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States.” I’m a big fan of “commodity histories” -- books on how everyday objects and products have become interwoven into our daily lives. It's odd that while many educated Americans know the year the Titanic sank, for example, scarcely any of them know the provenance of the items on their breakfast table – the coffee in their cup or the banana sliced onto their cornflakes. And this is a shame, really, for it’s quotidian details as much as major events that shape our lives. I suppose this is how schools can view reading bands so differently (I need to look up different in a thesaurus for more variety in my writing I think). Some schools move them literally on their ability to read and understand whereas many now use them alongside the National Curriculum levels more and are looking for much more in the understanding than just understanding the story. Eventually -- around the 1950's -- banana producers switched over to the Cavendish. The taste was good enough (most say it wasn't quite as good, although a few disagree), it was shippable (but not quite as sturdy as the Big Mike), and most importantly, it was resistant to Panama disease. Something similar could happen today, and so the author talks about attempts to develop new types of bananas that could replace the Cavendish. I actually heard about this book in The Straits Times, so I was super excited. It's about British Born Chinese, the Chinese part coming from Singapore. I'll just say up front that my standards for this are probably higher than most other fiction I read, because I've been looking for awesome Singapore fiction. Plus, after that disastrous Singapore Lover book, I'm probably overly sensitive to depictions of Singapore and Singaporeans.

This book covers the history -- and future! -- of the humble banana. It starts with its beginnings in Asia, its geographic and evolutionary progressing, and the arrival of the banana to America. The Life of a Banana tells the story of Xing Li, a British born Chinese girl. The story begins with the tragic death of her mother, meaning Xing and her brother are forced to live with their super rich and super strict grandmother. They've never had much of a relationship with her and they're dreading going to live with her and their aunt and uncle. Impeccably observed, often hilarious, and deeply moving... pitch-perfect.’ David Henry Hwang, Tony Award-winning writer. When she published her first novel Moonlight Shadow she was a student at Nihon University Art College and was waitressing at a country club. The novel was a hit and she received the Izumi Kyoka Prize from her university. She has also won the Umitsubame First Novel Prize and the 16th Izumi Kyoka Literary Prize. The young female narrator of Hardboiled is enjoying mountain hiking when she faces weird happenings. She realizes it’s the day when her strange lover Chizuru who “could see things other people couldn’t,” committed suicide and suddenly things start to make sense.Xing Li's Grandmother is a complicated and deeply flawed character who we get to learn more about as the book progresses. I can't say anything more about her, as I don't want to spoil anything. How about the notion that the banana was the fruit referred to in ancient texts about the Garden of Eden. The climate in the Fertile Crescent was not conducive to apples. And there is some softness in the translations of ancient writings. The forbidden fruit was called a fig, which is also what the banana was called. And really, doesn’t it seem a more fitting shape for the job? Which makes it all the more ironic that bananas are essentially asexual. They do not breed. The fruit we eat today came from cloned plants. Mass-consumption bananas has always come from plants that do not propagate themselves, but require man’s intervention. There are three pieces to the banana...the history of humanity's first cultivated plant (modern evidence from New Guinea shows human cultivation from 9000 years ago was of bananas, but for their corms not the fingers we eat today); the politics of the modern cultivation of the banana (the term "banana republic", which I have used without thinking for 30+ years, has a very literal beginning and a scarily modern ring); and the future of humankind's most basic and widely distributed food crop (essential to survival in several parts of the world, the banana is also under threat from several pests that defy modern chemistry to abate, still less conquer, and squeamish food-o-phobes in wealthy countries oppose all modern genetic engineering that could save the survival crop of many parts of the world). These three strands are awkwardly interwoven, with no obvious guiding editorial hand to make sense of their interrelation. She serves as a surface to Maria’s incessant thoughts and apprehensions. She is suffering from disabling disease, falls ill frequently, and perhaps will die soon. Nobody scolds her for whatever she does. She calls others ‘dimwits,’ ‘morons,’ and ‘assholes.’

The stories are about the power of time, healing, karma, fate and ultimately hope that becomes a transforming force in each story.I remember the first time I ever understood that the retelling of ordinary events could become magic. I a teenager, just beginning to write, searching for inspiration. I’d always loved books about other worlds – science fiction, Edgar Rice Burrough��s Tarzan series, even old pulp novels I bought at a local junk shop. But it had only recently begun to occur to me that the greatest constructed worlds could be found in works that were considered to be ‘true’ literature. That point was made most sharply with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude…”

The novel is brimming with loss, a tinge of nostalgia, and loneliness on the surface but just like Kitchen, this novel also ends in hope for human strength, beauty, and transcendence. I think they are probably all much of a muchness, perhaps there isn't much difference between the levels by this stage? If i look at biff, chip etc the books look the same at level 7/8/9 but if I look at the fireflies non fiction ones they are harder due to vocab and understanding required I think, books are shorter though. This book does not only look outwards at the experience of a British born Chinese girl in a predominantly white society but also what it is like to be British born Chinese with a strict Chinese family. Xing Li has an incredibly strained relationship with her grandmother and uncle which goes through numerous twists and turns throughout the book. The feelings Xing struggles with and tries to reconcile between her Western values and her grandmother's Chinese values is something I think a lot of British born Asians understand to varying degrees. Egmont has constantly made an impressionable impact time and time again to inspire and encourage young readers to learn the essential skills of reading. Egmont releases a list of the best and top quality titles from superb authors and illustrators which include picture books, classic titles such as Winnie the Pooh, Thomas & Friends, Andy Stanton to name a few. Some of these include fiction and non fiction books, but you can be confident that Egmont only produces the very best books. Egmont releases books which include a broad range, they focus on keeping kids entertained at all times whether they are traditional story books or gaming like Minecraft. This collection is divided into three sections for the purpose of developing kids reading ability in a steady and consistent way without putting them into too much pressure or problems, some of these methods includes simple stories, theme focussed, big speech bubbles to help parents guide children, and single stories to aid kids in learning how to follow a story from start to finish and help them understand comprehension skills. The Life of a Banana can make people think in intimate and silent reflection. What we are all called to do is essentially understand that there must not be any form of judgment or condemnation of those who look different. We need tolerance and full acceptance without any prejudice, which makes us more human.’ Vanity Fair

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Bananas have been coming up in my life a lot lately - I've decided they're the wonder food for biking. A guy at work has been sharing lots of banana factoids. So I'm predisposed to like reading about bananas. Preti Taneja, author of the Desmond Eliot winning “We That Are Young” helped open my mind to the prejudice that still exists in the publishing world (even in the independent and small press sector) against BAME authors, particularly women and particularly those born in the UK it seems. See for example: And this idea of British born Chinese - and the prejudices and difficulties of fitting in, faced as a result of the culture clash, is at the heart of the novel and its very title. This is how the author leads with his arse into a discussion of the “banana massacre” in Colombia in 1928, when the United Fruit Company violently put down a strike. Now, I just have to say that there are writers who can pull this sort of indulgent reminiscence off, but Koeppel isn’t one of them.

One might describe Tsugumi as afrail, sharp-tongued girl because of her horrid attitude, and profanities but behind all this insolence is a strong, fearless human being. The story focuses on Xing-Li, a teenaged girl, who'd lost her parents, and, with her brother, was forced to go and live with her Mum's family and the super-Chinese granny (old skool).

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I wouldn't say my daughter was anywhere near level 12. she could probably read the majority of the text and depending on the story could probably understand it to a point but I think she is much happier at level 9/10ish. I think 9 confidently and 10 marginally more challenging but still acceptable and enjoyable. Both the girls bearing the loss of their dear ones find relief in true love and devotion from their closest male characters in the novellas. So you get the idea, lots of info about something most of us never gave, well, a fig about. It is a fun read and you will find yourself saying (or thinking, if you don’t want to make the person next to you on the subway slowly edge away) “I did not know that.” Given that there are existential threats abroad to the common banana, and that we are not yet ready with a cross-bred version that is resistant to those threats, we should probably do what we can to appreciate the banana before it…um…splits.