Jumanji By Chris Van Allsburg

Book Genre: Fiction
Publishing Info: Houghton Mifflin and 27 pages
Awards or honors received: The Caldecott Medal

Summary: This book is about a jungle adventure board game that becomes a real life game for Judy and Peter, who are the main characters. The game is not over until one player reaches the golden city. During the game Judy and Peter encounters lions, monkeys, rhinoceros, snakes, and many more animals. After Judy reaches the golden city she yelled “Jumanji” and the game was over and all the animals and messed up house were gone and cleaned up.

Personal rating and reason for rating: *** Great! I enjoyed reading this book. I love animals and this is a great adventure that involves animals. I think that students will enjoy listening and reading this story. I have not read it to my students yet, but when I do I feel that they will enjoy it. I think this book will help students that don’t really like to read, but may need some encouragement.

Reading level: 3.9
Interest level: I would say K-4

Possible uses of the text in integrated units of study (reading and writing across the curriculum): A wonderful activity to do with your students would be a dialogue response journal. This book could be read for fun before school lets out and for homework have the students write or if they are younger have them draw their interpretation of the story. The next day the teacher can respond to the journal entry. For math the students could graph their favorite animal from the story.

Potential Problems or Difficulties: I don’t see any at this time.