The Caldcott Award

The Caldecott Award is is given annually to the artist of the most distinguished American Picture Book for Children published in the previous year. This medal is given for excellent illustrations in a picture book, and the recipient must be a U.S. citizen or resident. My chosen Caldecott Award book is the winner in 1982, Jumanji, written by Chris Van Allsburg. I chose this book because I have seen the movie, and I was interested in seeing why it won the award, and what it has in common to the movie. Some of the criteria the board takes in to account when choosing a winner is the interpretation of the story, the execution of the artist’s technique, style of illustration, presentation in recognition of a child audience, and the book must be a picture book. In this book, Van Allsburg explores the difference in fantasy and reality. This reminds me of the …show more content…
They get bored of their own toys, and they decide to venture off to the park across the street where they find a board game left under a tree to be taken. They decide to give it a chance, but soon find out that you must follow directions in order for the game to end. They are visited by lions, monkeys, monsoons, and volcanoes. The only way for them to leave is to get out of the jungle on the board and yell, “Jumanji.” Judy lands on the last space, yells Jumanji, and just like that everythig vanishes and their parents arrive shortly after. I believe the book won the Caldecott Award because even though it is in black and white, the pictures really do seem to come to life. For me, they jumped out of the page at you, just as the animals and jungle did from the board game. I liked the use of different points of view for each picture. It gave you multiple perspectives into this book. The shading in the illustrations used were realistic and lifelike. He made the animals look natural in the house, which is not realistic at