Jamberry | A Best Picture Book Review

Here's how much we loved Jamberry at my house: I read this aloud to my daughter while I was driving. 

Well, sort of. While I was driving, and my toddler was alone in the back seat, she would open the book and I would "read" (recite from memory) the words on each page. After reciting the page as she followed along with her finger or just looked at the pictures, I would say "Ding!" so that she would know when to turn the page.

We read this book so often that I had the entire book memorized, down to exactly when the page breaks came. That's what a wonderful, rereadable picture book this is!

Bruce Degen has authored and illustrated several children's books; in addition he has illustrated many others that were written by other children's book authors, including the brilliant Magic School Bus series by Joanne Cole.

Mr. Degen was raised in Brooklyn but spent his summers in a rural area of upstate New York, where he picked a lot of berries with his grandparents and got to help turn them into jams and jellies and pies and other goodies.

His fond remembrances were, of course, the inspiration for Jamberry. "It was green. It was soft. You could walk around in bare feet, and we used to go out and pick lots of berries that grew wild. I always thought of the world as being particularly generous and joyful. And when I was searching my memories, trying to write a book for very young children about being joyful, that popped right up."