Jumper

 A Day in the Life of a Backyard Jumping Spider 

By: Jessica Lana
Roaring Brook Press: 2023

Synopsis: 

What if you were as small as a bean and could walk on the walls and ceiling, sense vibrate ugh your elbows, jump five times your body length, see e world rough eight eyes and hear using tiny hairs all over your body?

That is Jumper’s world.  

Opens this book and discover the fascinating hidden life of a backyard jumping spider.

Vid:    

 About the Author:   Jessica Lanan is a children’s books author and illustrator who created her first picture book at the age of eight.  After graduating from college, she took a travel set of watercolors and inadvertently began her illustration career.  This is Jessica’s fourth book with Roaring Book Press. Following Just Rights Searching for the Goldenilocks planet, Finding Narnia: The Story of C.S. Lewis and His Brother, and The Lost Package.  She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

The Art 

The Illustrations in this book were created using ink, watercolor, and ganache according toe the copy write text.  

Jessica has been drawing her whole life and it shows in these illusions.  They are immersive.  They are rich with color and show movement, presence and perspective in a unique way.  In my opinion these illustrations entertain the reader and enrich the story  in a way author/illustrators usually struggle to do.  In fact….

What I Loved

- It’s rare to find an author/illustrator who puts equal weight in both the story and the pictures the way Jessica Lanan has in Jumper.  The illustrations don’t tell a separate story as much as they enhance the information being shared.  

There is a little girl paralleling everything Jumper is experiencing - hunger, danger, athletic feats.  And this really helped my daughter empathize with the little spider as she watched someone else doing what the spider was doing and thought …”me too” the whole time.

I also loved the use of the “What if” question at the start of each major topic.  That question spurs imagination and triggers conversation.  Idk if Jessica meant to, but this became a book of not only scientific facts about a spider, but also teaching mathematical scale, and gave us a way to talk about proportions as I described how far the little spider could jump.  

What I Liked

The theme of empathy for the little spider has spared the life of four jumping spiders that daughter has come across.  My husband even spared  a little wolf spider he'd  found in the grass.  Usually he’d have crushed it without hesitation.  This time he actually stopped to observe it, let us look at, and then marveled at how fast it was when it disappeared into the grass.

Lessons to Take away

This book is an excellent example of how to write to the illustrations, or illustrate to the writing.  Both compliment each other equally.  One is not more impressive than the other.

Jumper is more than an educational book about jumping spiders, it is an adventure about a little spider just trying to survive in a garden.  

Concepts: This story effortlessly pacts in concepts of math, empathy, science, and perspective without feeling preachy.  And does so in a way that affects the reader but doesn’t drown them in guilt

Conclusion:  

I love this book!  It's a great example of how to do engaging non-fiction that helps parents entertain and educate their kids.  The illustrations enhance the information.  This is a story that is fun kids will want come back to it again and again.  

10 our of 10 - would recommend to Teachers, Parents, and Librarians.  

If you’re interested in this book and you want to help me out please use my Amazon Associates Link to the give it try:  Jumper: A Day in the Life of a Backyard Jumping Spider

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