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Lucy & James Catchpole

@thecatchpoles

a year ago

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The text ‘Mandy would like to be a pineapple’ appears on cream paper, over a photo of Viola - partially obscuring her face. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with a fruit-decorated bagel and the new picture book ‘Mandy is Still a Banana’. The cover is bold and blue. It features Mandy - an illustrated banana with a face, alongside other anthropomorphic fruit, plums and strawberries. The author’s and illustrator’s names ‘Zoe Arena & Amy Evans’ are printed at the bottom. Viola’s dress is 50s-ish, white cotton floral with a yellow floral print and a peter pan collar.

Text overlaid reads: ‘But she isn’t’.
This and the next 5 images are photos of Inside pages from ‘Mandy is Still a Banana’ - close-ups on our kitchen table.
Within the book page - Zoe Arena’s words:
‘They aren’t yellow all over like bananas, and they aren’t bendy and half-moon-shaped either.
It must be really special to live life as a pineapple.’
Amy Evans’s illustration:
background is a soft, warm pink. Most prominent is Mandy, a large stylised yellow banana with a half-smile on her face. She’s awake, in a fruit bowl surrounded by other fruit, all asleep - a pear, lemon, a couple of strawberries, all asleep.

Text reads: ‘Maybe, a watermelon?’
Within the double page spread from the book, a watermelon and a pineapple (with sunglasses) look at each other.
Words on the page:
‘... a watermelon, like Wilhelmina.
This is food for thought.
Maybe Mandy doesn't want to be
a prickly pineapple like Pedro.
Huge and round…’

Text: ‘But that could get messy…’
On the page:
Words read: ‘BUDUMM BUDUMM’
We see Wilhelmina fall off the table, with increasing alarm…

'Poor Wilhelmina.’
On the page:
‘Dear,
oh dear!
It looks like watermelons aren’t so solid after all.’
Illustration shows a shocked Mandy, looking off and down, at the dreadful sight we can only image is poor Wilhelmina in a state of significant disrepair on the floor. Other fruit looks similarly aghast.

'Or maybe, being a banana isn’t so bad after all.’
On the page: in large, bold words ‘TOOT TOOT!’
‘I am Mandy and I am a BANANA!’
On a bright blue background, we can see the other fruit - including Wilhelmina, now bandaged after her fall.

Text: ‘Mandy is STILL a banana’
Text is overlaid over a photo of Viola holding the book - we can see the cover more clearly in this one.
In front of the book sit a real life banana and a pear with hand-drawn faces. Banana face by Viola’s sister Mainie - its face is deadpan, while James’s pear wears a less ambiguous big smile.

Text, over a similar photo, now with Viola’s eyes peeking out at the top:
‘And actually, that turns out to be perfect.’

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Posted On: September 25th 2025, 07:15 pm

Tagged Users:

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Out today! Mandy Is a banana. But Mandy's not comfortable in her leathery, yellow skin. She'd rather be a pineapple 🍍 like Pedro - or better still, a watermelon 🍉 like Wilhelmina, 'huge and round like a green full moon.' Then again, maybe not so much, once she's seen her roll off the kitchen table.

#talesfromchildrenspublishing

What's that Pink Floyd line about the English way? Hanging on in quiet desperation? Because Mandy's been hanging in there for a good while now, and she's STILL a banana. Just look at that face! The Weltschmerz...

We've been on a journey together, Mandy, Zoe, Amy and I. Zoe sent Mandy to me a few years ago. She'd been working on some ideas and then done just want you're NOT SUPPOSED TO DO as an unpublished picturebook author, which is to get together with an illustrator - Amy, in this case - and make a book together, and THEN try to sell it. I should know - I'd done exactly the same thing with Karen George on my own book. So I could hardly blame her! But I knew how hard it might be to sell...

And yet somehow, even without the support of an agent, they'd already managed to sell it at Bologna Book Fair, via an illustration showcase, to a publisher in Korea. That takes some chutzpah. And it's testament to how well Zoe's words and Amy's pictures sparked with each other.

All I had to do was to supply some of the editorial they'd been missing, and then show the new draft to Emma Blackburn, who came and sat in our kitchen, one heady morning, and left with all my best stories. (Come again!). Then it was up to Hachette to bend Mandy into her final shape.

Molly and Goldy, I hereby forgive you for taking out my favourite spread - the CSI money shot aka SPLAT.

Yes, it was too much - the watery, pippy mess that Wilhelmina made on the tiles, and her shocked expression, frozen forever. Yes, Mandy's and Pedro's reactions are enough. And yes, I was secretly delighted to see Wilhelmina return, wrapped in bandages like watermelon Humpty Dumpty. It's a happy ending, after all - for Mandy, who learns to love her bananadom, and for Zoe and Amy, who have a wonderful, and wonderfully unusual debut, publishing today.

Hats off!
- James

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