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I know that several of you who read Playing by the book also write book reviews. What’s the process you go through for this? Do you draft your reviews? Do you check out what other’s have written about the book in question?

And, dear readers, whether your write reviews or not, what is it that you look for in a review? Do you read book reviews elsewhere e.g. in magazines?

When we find a book we love and I want to review here, I tend to sit on it for quite a few days. If it’s a book I really love, often the review takes even longer to write – In fact, library fines are generally one way for me to tell which books are the real gems! Finding the words that a great book deserves can be quite a challenge for me and today’s book has been a case in point.

I’ve just sat down with a coffee and re-read (on my own, with some peace and quiet) Jitterbug Jam by Barbara Jean Hicks and Alexis Deacon. The first few phrases I jotted down after closing the covers were:

Jitterbug Jam is a wonderful story about finding friendship despite differences and fear. A young monster cannot sleep at night because there’s a boy hiding under his bed.

Even Godzilla, who everyone knows
is the bravest monster ever,
would be scared of a boy
with pink skin
and orange fur on his head
where his horns by right should be,
and eyes that awful colour the sky is
when you wake up in the middle of the day
and can’t see, it’s so bright out.

What the young monster learns in the course of the story is that the way to overcome his fear is to reach out and take the risk of (quite literally) extending a hand in friendship. The gamble pays off, and the young monster realises that he and the boy are more alike than not.

I lie awake a long time after,
thinking about that boy,
how he has a brother
and plays Hide ‘n’ Seek
and says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
just like Mama taught me.

And I think about how that boy must have a ma of his own,
and maybe a grampa like Boo-Dad
who tells him never, ever to
look at a monster’s toothy grin,
or he’s like to turn
to fluff and dust for ever.

The story is told in the first person, with a distinctive, unusual voice (I can hear the words with what I’d call a southern US drawl), and whilst this might make the text more of a challenge for a kid to read to themselves, it lends the story very well to being read out loud. The illustrations don’t remind me of any other’s I’ve seen before – and by this I want to say that they really are something fresh, different, engaging. They are full of detail that you’ll want to return to and will give you plenty to talk about with your kids.

Despite severa

Author: Barbara Jean Hicks (on JOMB)
Illustrator: Sue Hendra (on JOMB)
Published: 2009 Knopf (on JOMB)
ISBN: 9780375956867

Gasping, gobbling, grinning, crunching and belching, seven sherbet-coloured monsters revel in outrage at their broccoli-loving readers in this rhyming enticement to eat green.

Blueberry-eating books mentioned:

• Irving and Muktuk: Two Bad Bears
• Sleepover Larry

More food on JOMB:

• Treasure for Lunch
• The King’s Taster
• Berry Magic
• The Butter Man
• The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza
• The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster: A Tale of Picky Eating
• The Tortilla Cat
• Too Many Tamales
• Chopsticks
• Mammoth Pie
• On Top of Spaghetti
• Pumpkin Soup
• A Medieval Feast
• Sanji and the Baker

Pop over to Poetry For Children for today’s full menu of poetry offerings. Poetry Fridays are brought to us by Kelly Herold of Big A, Little A.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on a favourite children’s book. Leave a voice message on our JOMB listener hotline, +1-206-350-6487, so we can include your audio in our show.