Module 3: Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, and Pura Belpre

So this week I'm reading some award winners, and for my review, I picked two Caldecott winners that won 10 years apart. First up is the 1982 winner Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg.

I'm sure everyone remembers the movie that was based off of this book. What happens is two kids are left home, and like normal kids, they get bored. They find an old board game, Jumanji, in the park, and with each roll the space they land on comes to life, with lions, monkeys, and rhinos (oh my!). In order to get rid of the chaos (Spoiler Alert!), they have to finish the game. The same thing happens in Van Allsburg's Zathura, also made into a movie with Kristen Stewart pre-Twilight, except Zathura is "A Space Adventure" instead of "A Jungle Adventure." I have to say I enjoyed the book much more than the movie. The illustrations are amazingly detailed and feel like an extension of the text.

"Mr. Van Allsburg's illustrations have a beautiful simplicity of design, balance, texture, and a subtle intelligence beyond the call of illustration." The New York Times

It would be a great program to have kids draw out their own board game and make up rules for it. An alternative to that would be I would make up the board game and the kids would be assigned roles (the players and the characters that come to life).


The other book is the 1992 Caldecott winner Tuesday by David Wiesner.

This book is told mostly in pictures. We see a few frogs start to float up, and then they fly through town, getting tangled up in clotheslines and chasing dogs. The text only marks the passing of time, so it almost feels like a documentary. The real value, I think, is in the details, like the look on the turtle's face as the frogs float over it, the frog who waves through the kitchen window at the man eating a late night sandwich (also notice that the text says "11:21 P.M." and the clock in the picture is also set to that time), and the frog who changes channels with his tongue.

"Kids will love its lighthearted, meticulously imagined, fun-without-a-moral fantasy. Tuesday is bound to take off." School Library Journal

One idea to use this in the library would be to have kids write their own story to accompany the pictures and have them read it out loud or post it on a bulletin board. Another idea would be to have them create their own wordless story.