Wake Me Up in 20 Coconuts!

Gr 1-3–In an apartment building where all the residents seem to know one another, a pink drop-shaped resident with a broken alarm clock asks a blue noodle to wake her up in 20 coconuts. It’s a downhill slide into chaos as the blue noodle freaks out while a redhead wearing a bucket wakes up the pink one, known informally by her apartment number, 2C, at the appointed coconut. Readers will try to guess the meaning of this time challenge, only to be thrown under the bus as the substitute measure of “bananas” is tossed into the salad. This is the plot: The blue noodle spends the entire book attempting to figure out what “20 coconuts” refers to, only to find out that no one knows. The moral of the story is to admit when you do not know something to save everyone from disarray and confusion. The other moral is to let fever dreams disappear into the mists; like the blue noodle, readers may feel as if an inside joke has been played out at their expense.