Book Reviews for The Juggler

The Juggler is pure delight.  Henri enchants as we dream with him, learn with him, overcome our fears with him and find him sharing his gift of juggling with the world.  Jeanette Hopkins is an author/educator who teaches as she shares her joy of language.  Illustrator Stormy Mochal has created an enchanting, richly textured and colorful world for Henri where doors are juggled, cats are jugglers and pigs really can fly.  Sometimes all we need to achieve our dreams is a good teacher and "the courage to miss."  Jeanette and Stormy give us both wisdom and joy in this wonderful book.  A perfect book to read aloud and dream into our own lives.

Amy Robbins-Wilson

The Lullaby Lady, MA

 

 

 

Children pursue the mental dexterity of counting as they pursue the physical dexterity of increasingly complex tasks.  In Henri, the juggler, they meet a young farmer who aspires to an aesthetic life beyond his occupation.  Using common animals and objects, he practices a skill uncommon to those in his realm.  Mastery requires applied virtues:  practice, perseverance, and willingness to be mentored from outside familiar boundaries.  The Juggler shares an engaging story, but can cultivate life lessons as well.

Dr. James Davis, Director

The Iowa Writing Project

 

 

 

In her latest children’s book The Juggler, Jeanette Hopkins has created a delightful story pulsating with rhyme, rhythm, and repetition while being embellished with eye-popping, vibrant illustrations by Stormy Mocha.  A young farmer named Henri dreams of juggling many objects but becomes heart-broken at only being able to set aloft three cabbages.  A visit to the circus further inspires him, and after a failure-filled dream night, a “withered old man” appears at his door providing the porcine secret to juggling success.

 

The tantalizing rhyme and rhythm scheme allows adults to read aloud the story, pausing for children to complete the next word or rhyme.  Three times during the story the juggler attempts or succeeds in reaching the goal of ten juggled items: first, the crowd counts as the circus jugglers spin cabbages in the air, in the second instance small numbers are provided by the air-borne creatures, and the third time the numbers are enlarged so that the piggies are hanging onto a “7” or have their heads encircled by an “8” or “9.”  These visual clues can entice young readers to chant the numbers aloud.  Also inviting children’s participation are color-naming opportunities with florescent rainbows at the beginning and end of the story and intense hues on other pages of bright red barns, purple skies, and brown-spotted cows.

              

These illustrations and others add an enticing feature to the book.  The underlying or subtle theme of “follow your dreams” can be seen in the replication of the first page’s bright-hued rainbow transformed into multi-colored quilt patterns on the stranger’s vest and Henri’s overalls.   The tiny artistic details can make a shared adult-child reading even more entertaining:  the red wagon alliteratively named the “Farm Flyer,” a mis-juggled cabbage plopping into a milk pail, the visual contrast of a dark starry night to a yellow-baked sunshiny morning, the orange cat’s and spotted dog’s facial features varying from contentment to consternation, a Swiss bovine adorned in a red polka-dotted cowbell, and cape-bedecked piglets becoming Super-Flying Pigs.  Each page holds colorful delights and intricate details.

                             

This action-packed story is bound to be a hit at a storytime library hour; with preschool or kindergarten instructors wishing to teach rhymes, colors, or numbers; or in shared armchair reading times in living rooms.  Whatever the environment, children will delight in Henri’s humorous antics, and parents and teachers will appreciate the theme of persistence and creativity in opening the doors to one’s dreams. 

 

Donna Niday

Associate Professor of English Education

Assistant English Department Chair

Iowa State University