First, there's the way the monkeys speak. Myers doesn't go far enough to make it an accent or a colloquial twist, instead it's just bad grammar. It reads very awkwardly.
My second gripe is that the two female monkeys are two dimensional idiots. Their only thoughts are about how cute the male monkeys are and which one can bankroll the best easy life. That is also the sum of their worth. There are also comments made about them that are just inappropriate. "She was Drusilla's best friend, even though she was known to have flirty eyes." Why is this even relevant??
The overall message of the book should be a good one, but I think he starts to mix his metaphors. Instead of "looking for the good life," the monkeys go on a quest to find greener pastures in anything. Since they have a laughably easy life to begin with ("I'm tired of having to stretch all out of shape just to get a banana.") this is an absurd comparison to make. The author missed the mark.
My biggest issue with this book is one particular line. The lion has treed the male monkeys and is standing guard with a bloody tail hanging out of his mouth. "The five monkey friends stayed there, shivering and shaking, until the moon came up and the lion went off to mess with his girlfriend." Excuse me?! If that doesn't mean sex then it alludes to violence, neither is appropriate for a preschool picture book. Dear god, what was the editor thinking?!
Walter Dean Myers might be a force to reckon with in young adult fiction, but he has no clue how to create a book for younger readers and someone in the publishing industry should have explained that Before this disaster was published. I hope it dies quietly before too many children read it. Yuck!
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