When Peter and Judy find a discarded board game under a tree, they expect a simple afternoon of play. However, once the dice are cast, the jungle elements described on the cards materialize inside their suburban home. A hungry lion appears on the piano, monkeys ransack the kitchen, and a monsoon floods the living room. Van Allsburg uses detailed, grayscale pencil illustrations to depict the house as it is overtaken by rhinoceros stampedes and giant pythons. The children must reach the Golden City to end the chaos.
Young readers who enjoy surrealism and suspense find this story rewarding because it treats childhood play with high stakes. People read it to see familiar domestic settings transformed into dangerous landscapes. The book provides a lesson in finishing what one starts and maintaining focus under pressure. Readers walk away with the image of a mundane life being disrupted by the wild, leaving them to wonder if the boundaries between imagination and physical reality are thinner than they appear.
Practical, outward-looking and clear-cut; an easy read.
Best for readers like The Practical Optimizer. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1981
- Language
- EN
