Jumanji Theme

Chris Van Allsburg’s Jumanji a Caldecott winning picture book tells the story of two curious children. These children are left at home while their parents go out for the evening. Peter and Judy the two main characters leave the house in search of something to entertain themselves while the parents are at the opera. While they were out they found a board game called Jumanji and it seemed to be an ordinary board game. After they rolled the dice they realized that this was not any ordinary game that they had ever played. Once they got home they opened up the board game and Peter picks up the dice, “wait put those down and listen”, Judy exclaims, “I’m going to read the directions: Jumanji a young people’s jungle adventure especially designed for the bored and restless” (Van Allsburg). This quote from Judy foreshadows that something out of the ordinary is going to happen if they proceed to play the game. Judy reads the last part of the instructions that reads, “Very Important: once a game of Jumanji is started it will not be over until one player reaches the golden city”. (Van Allsburg). This last part of the instruction adds some suspense and anticipation as to what is to come later in the …show more content…
A strong theme in this book is that the choices we make have consequences whether they are good or bad. In this case the consequences of playing the game were not virtuous which led to unexpected and unfortunate events. Children will always be curious in the early stages of life and learn from their mistakes. Van Allsburg portrayed this concept very well in Jumanji by giving the children the choice to put the game down or play it. In the end of the story you get the sense that Peter and Judy learned a lesson from playing the game. Another theme, this book conveys is don’t start something unless you intend to finish. This theme is shown in text at the beginning when Judy reads the instructions