Book cover image:
Book Summary: When
Peter and Judy’s parents leave them home alone for an evening, they decide that
they need to do something exciting to pass the time. They go outside and
discover a board game with a note that says to “read instructions carefully.”
Having found something exciting to do, they go home and begin playing the
jungle adventure game, Jumanji. Judy
follows all of the instructions and notes that “once a game of Jumanji is
started it will not be over until one player reaches the Golden City.” Once
they begin playing, situations and jungle animals begin to appear from the
game, causing them a lot of stress. True to the rules, Judy pushes Peter to
finish the game, and they are relieved when their adventure is finally over.
However, soon the game is being played by a couple of boys who do not normally
follow the instructions…
APA Reference of Book:
Van, C. A. (1981). Jumanji. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Impressions: First
of all, the illustrations in this book are beautiful. The use of black and
white toned pictures and realistic lines portrays a story where the mundane
turns into an exciting adventure. While the book does not have the emotional
depth of the movie adaptation, it is a great story for teaching children to
make their own excitement and to always follow the directions carefully.
Professional Review:
Pollack, P. (1981, May). [Review of the book Jumanji, by Chris Van
Allsburg]. School Library Journal, 27(9), 60.
Jumanji is a jungle adventure board game come to
life via the magic that, in Van Allsburg's world, is always waiting to leak
into the everyday. With successive dice rolls, deepest, darkest Africa invades
the neat, solid, formally arranged rooms of the unsuspecting players' house.
The players-a blase brother and sister home alone-are momentarily dumbstruck
but not really upset. They steadfastly go on with the game as monkeys, grinning
with wicked gleam, raid the kirchen and hunker around the game board; rhinos
charge intently through the living room (and righ into once line of vision); a
Python coils on the mantel, its pattern set off by leafy slipcover design to
give a jungle camoflage effect. S in The Garden of Abdul Gasazi (Houghton,
1979), which Jumaji outdoes in story terms, real ad unreal rub
shoulders in three-dimensional drawings extraordinary for the multiplicity of
gray tones the artist chives and the startling contrasts with brilliant white.
The eye-fooling angles, looming shadows and shifting perspective are worthy of
Hitchcock, yet all these "special effects" are supplied with only a
pencil.-Pamela D. Pollack, "School Library Journal"
Library Uses: Librarians can use this book to teach students how
the artist’s style of illustrations (line art, use of black and white versus
color) can contribute to the story the author is portraying.
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