Bradley Banana and The Jolly Good Pirate

If a flower essence for humility became a child, what would it look like? Bradley Banana! This high-seas adventure tale is presented in a hardcover children’s book that arrived to our office less than a week ago—yet people already seem to like Bradley Banana the moment they look into his watercolor eyes.

“Great name,” said the town librarian when I enquired about presenting an enacted storytelling of Bradley Banana and The Jolly Good Pirate for the library’s “storytelling hour” to the children.

The book’s first performance took place last night at a loca week long camp out. A dozen families gathered around a campfire to watch the proud pirate captain, Chadwick Clumpalong, emerge from the trees to meet a little boy who would change his life forever.

And so the story unfolded: would the pompous captain force Bradley to walk the plank, or would Bradley’s example of calm humility help Clumpalong to understand that there’s more to life than merely himself?

The idea came to me many years ago of personifying the Spirit-in-Nature Essences as children—though it wasn’t until years later that I was finally able to actually commit to writing about them.

First came Samantha Strawberry while I was on a camping trip near Lake Tahoe. Paragraph by paragraph, my sharpened pencil sketched out her quality of dignity that saved the Trufflestrum Forest from being leveled into a housing development. Next was Leona Lettuce, whose calmness became a soothing presence in teaching her brother to ride his bicycle with confidence.

Why Bradley Banana came first in the book series is a mystery. It just happened that way. Every part of this project has had a sense of fun and adventure, much like Bradley’s trek up “The Vanishing Mountain.”

A great deal of research was involved for everything including the shape and size of the book—landscape or portrait, large or small—and even the tiniest detail of what font to use. After many trips to libraries, book stores and online stores, there it was, the perfect font with sans serif letters (easier for children to read), long and slightly arched—just like bananas!

It’s been an honor to work with Chitra Sudhakaran on this book. Her sensitivity to the subtleties of this project is apparent in every illustration. In bringing the storyboard to life, we both felt that something much bigger than either the text or the drawings alone was created. (Thank you, Chitra!)

I hope you get to meet Bradley Banana. He’s a delightful little guy.