Can You Grow a Striped Banana?

Imagining scenarios in which an adult acknowledges that they can’t do the impossible, Santopolo, making her picture book debut, and Abe (The Pet Potato) spin the admission into a silly-sweet expression of love. Steadily rhythmic lines and digitally finished pencil, pen, and charcoal illustrations follow a caregiver and child, both portrayed with light brown skin, navigating highly specific inadequacies. “I can’t bathe a brontosaurus,” the narrator intones near a dino-filled tub, or “speak in squeak or meow” at a glamorous feline premiere. Nor can they “drink fresh chocolate milk/ from a tiny chocolate cow” at a diner where diminutive bovines carry glasses across the counter. Alongside lilting rhymes, the art’s simple shapes and warm colors play with a child’s dawning awareness that adults aren’t all-powerful. Still, the narrator reveals a significant trick up their sleeve: after dipping into some craft supplies, the adult presents the child with a paint-striped banana, suggesting that where there’s a will—and a bit of imagination—there’s always a way “to show my love to you.” Ages 2–5. Author’s agent: Miriam Altshuler, DeFiore & Co. Illustrator’s agent: Carol Ann Wood, Eunice McMullen. (Apr.)