January 28-February 3, 2013
Jumanji
Caldecott Winner 1982
Bibliography:
Van
Allsburg, Chris. (1981). Jumanji. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Summary:
When Peter and Judy found a game outside, they decided it
may do well to relieve their boredom. Peter noticed a handwritten note,
obviously from another child, that warned the players must read the
instructions carefully. This proved important when their board game took over
their house and lives. This game thrust Peter and Judy into a desperate race to
complete the objective and get themselves out of danger!
Impressions:
Knowing this book is a popular movie with children, I
expected it to be a longer and more complicated story. I was pleasantly
surprised to find this story easy to read, fast paced and with excellent
illustrations.
Reviews:
As in The Garden of
Abdul Gasazi (Houghton, 1979), which Jumanji
outdoes in story terms, real and unreal rub shoulders in three-dimensional
drawings extraordinary for the multiplicity of gray tones the artist achieves
and the startling contrasts with brilliant white. The eye-fooling angles,
looming shadows and shifting perspectives are worthy of Hitchcock, yet all
these “special effects” are supplied with only a pencil.Pollack, P. D. (1981). Jumanji (Book Review). School Library Journal, 27(9), 60.
This Caldecott Award winning book has been intriguing people since it first came out. For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, it's the story of a bored brother and sister, left on their own for the afternoon, who find the board game, Jumanji, under a tree in the park. The instructions, on a note attached to the box, are firm: once started, the game must be played to the finish. When the children play the game, each adventure on the board brings the real creatures and events to life and into their home, creating danger and chaos. It isn't until Judy reaches Jumanji, the golden city at the end of the board, and yells the name that everything disappears, broken things are made whole and all is normal. The children put the game back where they found it, telling no one, only to watch children of friends of their parents who are known for not reading directions, take the game.
Hurst, C. O. Jumanji. Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site.
Uses:
In a library, I would include this story in a focus on books
that have been adapted into film. People often say the book is always better. I
would challenge students to make this determination for themselves.***********************************************************************************
The Three Pigs
Caldecott Winner 2002
Bibliography:
Wiesner,
David. (2001). The three pigs. New York: Clarion Books.
Summary:
This interesting retelling of a classic story presents the
three little pigs holed up in their homes, being sought after by that big bad
wolf. Only instead of blowing down their houses, he blows them right out of the
confines of the storybook pages. The pigs then embark on an adventure by turning
one of the loose pages into a paper airplane and they fly into other stories.
After meeting a dragon on their second stop, they decide to go home again once
they find the page with the brick house the third pig lives in. In this story,
the dragon chooses to come along and scares the wolf away.
Impressions:
My first thought was that this
was the same old story I’ve heard countless times, until the pages looked
funny. Then I was intrigued. I wanted to know where the author was going with
this. I’ve actually gone back a few times and reread it just to enjoy the
creativity of it all.Reviews:
David Wiesner's postmodern interpretation of this tale plays imaginatively with traditional picture book and story conventions and with readers' expectations of both. (Though with Wiesner, we should know by now to expect the unexpected.) Astute readers will notice the difference between the cover's realistic gouache portrait of the three pigs (who stare directly out at the viewer with sentient expressions) and the simple outlined watercolor artwork on the title page. In fact, the style of the illustrations and the way the characters are rendered shifts back and forth a few times before the book is done, as Wiesner explores the possibility of different realities within a book's pages. The text, set in a respectable serif typeface, begins by following the familiar pattern--pigs build houses, wolf huffs and puffs, wolf eats two pigs, etc. But while the text natters on obliviously, the pigs actually step (or are huffed and puffed) out of the muted-color panel illustrations without being eaten. Escaping their sepia holding lines and the frames of their predictable storybook world, they enter a stark white landscape where they are depicted realistically with more intricate shading. The now-3-D-looking pigs, released from the story's inevitability, explore this surrealistic realm. The perplexed wolf remains behind in the two-dimensional pages, which, when viewed from the pigs' new vantage point, stand vertically in space, looking altogether like paper dominoes waiting to be knocked down. And that's what the three pigs do, with glee. The pigs' informal banter appears in word balloons in a sans-serif font; a few striking wordless spreads feature the pigs flying (this is Wiesner, after all) across blank spreads on a paper airplane made from a page of their story. Obviously, there's a lot going on here, but once you get your bearings, this is a fantastic journey told with a light touch. The pigs encounter other free-standing story pages; they enter and exit a nursery rhyme and then a folktale, morphing into and out of each one's illustrative style. Saccharine, cotton-candy illustrations cloy "Hey Diddle Diddle" ("Let's get out of here!" one pig exclaims); precise black-and-white line drawings dignify a folktale about a dragon who guards a golden rose. The cat and its fiddle as well as the chivalrous dragon join the pigs in full-color, realistic definition, and eventually the five friends end up back at the pigs' story. After shaking the type off the pages, the animals re-enter the tale--but this time on the pigs' own terms. The last page shows them all happily ensconced in the full-page watercolor illustration, using letters of text to write their own happy ending while the wolf sits outside at a nonthreatening distance. Wiesner may not be the first to thumb his nose at picture-book design rules and storytelling techniques, but he puts his own distinct print on this ambitious endeavor. There are lots of teaching opportunities to be mined here--or you can just dig into the creative possibilities of unconventionality.
Flynn, K. (2001). The Three Pigs. Horn Book Magazine, 77(3), 341-342.
The story begins like a
traditional retelling of "The Three Little Pigs;"
however, it goes askew when the pigs step out of the story and take
off on their own. They fly into other nursery rhymes and fairy tales and cause
confusion and disarray before finishing their own story. The zany is overdone
here: The middle portion of the book is hopelessly muddled. Various
illustrative styles reflect the quirky flow of the story. Students who are very
familiar with the various fairy tales mentioned will have a good time picking
them out.
The Three Pigs. (book review). (2001). Library Talk,
14(3), 42.
Uses:
This would be great to introduce other traditional and
non-traditional stories to young readers. I would take other versions of tales
students have heard countless times and introduce other interpretations.
