Jamberry

This book has some of the most amazingly vibrant, inventive, original, and mouthwatering pictures I've ever seen. Willow loves to look at the pictures now, and I can only imagine that as she gets older we'll spend lots of time talking about all the different berries, food disguised as plants (waffle lilies surrounded by pats of butter...jam roll flowers decorating a strawberry jam skating rink), and silly animals (elephants skating on said jam). The nonsensical language is also great--this is an excellent example of a book that you just MUST sing and dance to as you read it. As silly as it is, the language is also very smart: I appreciate the plays on word combinations, and certain parts are definitely a tongue twister to read. This is show more a book that, while short in length, will certainly be long in usage...we will be reading, experiencing, and playing with this book for years. show less

They're off... a boy and an endearing, rhyme-spouting bear, who squires him through a fantastic world of berries. And their adventure comes to a razzamatazz finale under a starberry sky.

We've been reading this to the kid since birth, but she's really getting into it at around 20 months. Fun, lots of good detail, doesn't really get old for me. Although my theory about how the book is actually the kid's hallucination from eating poisonous berries is getting pretty elaborate.

Overflowing with all types of berries and a perfect read for late summer, Jamberry captures the essence of rhyme, alliteration, and visual language. Degen’s text is abundant with sweet rhymes and frolicking rhythm; it’s all the fun of a tongue twister without being difficult to say aloud. I never tire of reading it aloud to C, even though I must say the word berry 30+ times! C loves the whimsical illustrations, including a blueberry waterfall and exploding berry fireworks.

The rhyming in this book makes it a nice, smooth read for 1st and 2nd graders. The illustrations (also by Bruce Degen) are quite wondrous. This picture book is in a class of its own! I love make-believe worlds such as the berry-covered world in this story :) I also enjoy the classic relationship between boy and bear.

I'm going back to a beloved childhood class today, with Jamberry. Originally published in 1983 as a picture book, the first board book edition was created in 1995 and it has been continuously in print since then.

Degen's cheerful pictures show a white boy with striped blue shirt, brown trousers, and suspenders, his reddish-brown hair sticking out every which way, cavorting through the pages. The boy is accompanied by a friendly brown bear, sporting a stylish purple top hat. There's no particular plot, just explosions of berries everywhere! The endpages start with the barefoot boy, wandering among the berry bushes and sampling sweet treats. He encounters the bear in a canoe, hat full of berries, and the two set off together.

They travel show more past marshmallow meadows, encounter frolicking ponies and lambs with baskets of strawberries, cart off a trainful of blackberries, and float into the sky in a balloon that's a giant pink berry, with explosions of berries all around them, ending in a flood of berries and sweet stickiness.

The text is so much fun to read-aloud and repeat - who can ever forget, "Quickberry! Quackberry! Pick me a blackberry!" It's a tongue-twister of berries as the rhymes bounce along each page and become sillier and sillier, "Moonberry, starberry cloudberry sky/Boomberry zoomberry rockets shoot by."

Verdict: The book is still available as a hardcover picture book, as well as a board book, and I think the original version shows off the art better. In the board book it's a little squashed and fuzzy, and it's hard to pick out all the details. However, any way you can get it this is a sweet, berry-licious story that's a must-have for most library collections.

ISBN: 9780062643797; This edition published 2017 by HarperFestival; Two copies (board book) owned by the library show less

All about berries. The rhythm of the words make this book sound so much interesting. As I read the story, I could imagine the laughter that children would get from reading this story. Jamberry discusses all the types of berries and has pictures to show what each one looks like. I would refer this book to teachers who are teaching about fruit.