Zathura

Title: Zathura

Author: Chris Van Allsburg

Illustrator: Chris Van Allsburg

Medium: Like Laura's book "Jumanji", it looks like the illustrator using the charcoal pencil to do the illustrations.

Genre: Modern Fantasy

Other Relevant Information: It was made into a major motion picture in 2005.

Summary: Two boys on their own doesn't realize that the mysterious and mystical space adventure game was realistic than what it was supposed to.

Literacy Elements:

Language: It's very clear and easy to understand for the child readers.  In the book, there is a unusually high amount of conversation going on between Walter and Danny as they go through the game.

Structure: The structure of the book is very simple, because in the book, there is the text on one side and the illustrations on the other side. It tends to rotate between the left and right side as the story going throughout the book.

Theme: Survival, determination, teamwork, brotherly love, and imagination.

Illustrations: The illustrator is very simple when it comes to illustrating the book. The images perfectly matches with the book's plot page by page as the story progresses throughout the book. It is very simple and easy to visualize with the plot too.

Evaluation: If you're a Chris Van Allsburg fan, then you would love this book too! It's almost like a sequel to "Jumanji" because the book mentioned about it sometimes visually and literally too. It's as if science fiction and modern fantasy is mixing into a modern science fantasy book. The children would love this book because it's very simple to follow and easy to read.

Follow-Up Activity: Maybe I can use the book to help the students role-play, almost like making a mini-play for the students to enjoy and have fun doing it then the students will write a paragraph explaining what it's like being a specific character in this book. I can use it to rotate a group of students for each part of the book.