Book-A-Day Almanac

June 4 has been designated Drawing Day or Pencil Day. Today we are encouraged to create art and to remember the joy we had when we first picked up a pencil and drew. If I ask myself what is the most amazing book I ever watched being published that was created by a pencil, the answer comes in a flash—Chris Van Allsburg’s now classic Jumanji.

Appearing on April 27, 1981, twenty years ago, Jumanji was Chris’s second book, following his highly successful The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. Chris was trained as a sculptor at the University of Michigan, but taught himself to draw. His superrealistic but otherworldly black-and-white illustrations came to the attention of Walter Lorraine at Houghton Mifflin, who encouraged Chris to create picture books.

Chris’s artwork immediately caught the attention of children and critics, but not always favorably. Paul Heins of the Horn Book criticized The Garden of Abdul Gasazi for being too sophisticated—Paul later apologized in print. By the time Jumanji came on the scene, adults and children alike were watching what this extraordinary newcomer to the field might do. He had wowed everyone with amazing scenes, one-point perspective, and aerial views. So realistic did his pictures appear that many children remembered his first two books as being in color rather than black and white.

Jumanji rests on an age-old premise: the parents leave home, the children start to entertain themselves, and chaos ensues. Before the parents’ return, order has to be restored. In this story, the children, Judy and Peter, pull out a board game, Jumanji, which warns them that once started it must be finished. They don’t really pay much attention to instructions and suddenly find the game come to life in their home: a lion on the piano, monkeys in the kitchen, rhinos charging into the dining room, and a snake on the mantel. All of these images from Van Allsburg’s brilliantly created fantasy world have been rendered in pencil. All show detail, shading, patterns, perspective, and drama. The rhinos burst out of the picture frame. Readers look down from the ceiling as Judy and Peter play this game with increased frenzy.

Because the drawings carry so much of the book, Chris finished them first. He wanted to make sure that every detail, every nuance was right. I still have the selling sample prepared for sales conference—only the drawings are in place because the words still needed to be finalized. Even without a line of text, you can “read” the story in the art, all of it created with the lowly pencil.

Chris won his first Caldecott for Jumanji. It became a successful movie, and it stands as an important part of the picture book canon for its inventiveness and execution. When I saw Van Allsburg’s drawings emerge, I fell in love with this book. Jumanji represented everything that I, then a young person in publishing, could hope for: something brilliant and profound being created right before my eyes. I love it just as much today—an example of the singular and idiosyncratic vision of the father of the American picture book. For all budding young artists celebrating Drawing Day, you never know what might happen when you pick up a pencil.

Here’s a page from Jumanji: