American YouTuber, author, and cosplayer Christine Riccio, aka “PolandBananas,” rose to recognition thanks to her two YouTube channels. Her main channel mostly focuses on storytelling, book reading, comedic reviews, and elements of popular book culture. Her second channel consists of humorous vlogs, skits, and other videos. She has a sizable fan base across all of her channels and is one of the most well-known YouTubers ever to focus on books. ‘The Shadowhunter Chronicles’ and the ‘Harry Potter’ series are Christine Riccio’s all-time favorite books, and she founded the YouTube book club ‘Booksplosion’ as well. She has dancing training, and she frequently posts dance videos on her channels. Her most watched YouTube videos include “Lady Gaga Judas Dance,” “Literary Book Titles,” and “Favorite Book Series Of All Time.” She is not just one of the most well-known booktubers, but she is also making her writing debut with the book “Again But Better.”
Career and Internet Fame
On March 29, 2006, Christine Riccio, also known as Xtinemay, launched her first YouTube channel, titled “PolandBananas20.” The channel was designed to include vlogs, dance videos, and simply amusing videos at random. To protect her real identity from online stalkers, she created the name “PolandBananas” using both the fruit banana and the bottled drinking water from Poland Springs. The channel’s debut video was a vlog titled “Backhandspring Failure” that featured Olivia, her sister.
She then published dancing videos like “Lady Gaga – Poker Face” and “Battlefield Music Video” as a response. She began receiving a ton of views in 2009 for her comic performances in the Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber music videos “Love Me” and “Telephone Dance.” Then, ‘Forever And Always – Taylor Swift Music Video’ became the first video on her channel to receive more than 245k views, and her subscriber base exploded.
She also began reviewing novels and debating story aspects on her YouTube channel, PolandBananas20, around the same time. Her reviews of The Shadowhunter Chronicles, Cassandra Clare’s young-adult series, attracted a completely other audience. On June 5, 2010, she launched her second channel, “PolandBananasBooks,” due to her love of reading and the audience’s apparent appreciation of the book reviews and conversations. On her initial channel, she continued to publish vlogs, dance videos, and humorous sketches. On films like “Siblings / The Sequel” and “Baking With Christine & Katie | Pieing for 100,000,” she also began to include her brother, sister, and friends, which only increased her fame.
Her social media career took a turn when she founded “PolandBananasBooks.” More than 30k people watched her debut video, “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer: Booktalk With Xtinemay,” which was published on June 7, 2010. Her book talks started garnering more and more views as she started primarily focusing on young-adult novels. This was partly because of her entertaining and frequently comical presentation style. In addition, she was able to attract a lot of viewers who were her age.
Through her ‘book talk with Xtinemay’ series and humorous videos like ‘The Noob’s Guide To Contemporary Reads’ and ‘Harry Potter Nerd Off With Brizzy Voices & Tessa Netting | Xtinemay,’ Christine Riccio keeps reviewing books and encouraging viewers to become readers. Along with YouTubers JesseTheReader and Katytastic, she is also recognized for launching the YouTube book club “Booksplosion,” which is credited with sparking a book revolution on the platform. Christine is arguably one of the most well-known book tubers on YouTube, with a total of 500k subscribers across both of her channels and her fame is only growing.
Christine Riccio has also tried her hand at writing. She reimagined fairy tales from the perspective of the villain in her first essay, which was published in the young-adult anthology “Because You Love To Hate Me.” She began writing her own book in 2016, and on August 7, 2018, she formally announced that the book would be published on May 21, 2019. The protagonist Shane grows up in the debut book “Again, But Better,” which tells the tale of how she discovers happiness in her life through bravery and a dash of magic.
Individual Life of Christine Riccio
On August 4, 1990, Christine Riccio was born in Livingston, New Jersey, in the United States. The only thing that is known about her parents on social media is that her father has a business that sells copiers and fax machines. Olivia, her younger sister, was born on November 11, 1993, and Paul, her brother, was born in 1999. She attended Boston College. She acknowledged dating someone in 2018, but we don’t know who he is.
Net Worth of Christine Riccio
The estimated net worth of Christine Riccio is around $1 million.