My Favorite Picture Book (This Week)

It's called Jamberry (HarperCollins 1995) by Bruce Degen, and I can't believe it's not a classic.  The book features a little boy--looking very Huck-Finn-ish in his straw hat and bare feet--and a big friendly bear who takes him on a fantastical tour of berry patches.  Blueberries float down a river and plunge over a waterfall; blackberries spill over the sides of railway cars that bounce finally into the station of raspberry-studded Berryland.  And the whole journey is peopled by animals who revel in each batch of berries alongside the two main characters. 

What I love most about the book is the language.  It's lyrical and light; reading Jamberry aloud feels like singing.  And it's whimsical: Almost every word  becomes "berrified".  Here's my favorite example, from the second-to-last page, when the boy and bear take off from Berryland in a hot-air balloon (berry-shaped, of course):  "Moonberry/ Starberry/ Cloudberry sky/ Boomberry/ Zoomberry/ Rockets shoot by".   (Man, I got chills typing out that quotation.)

And the best part about this intense delight I take in the book?  I can read it to my nine-month-old every day because it fits all of his criteria for a great story: It rhymes, it's short, and it has lots of interesting shapes and colors.  Sounds good to me, too.