Book: Zathura

Overview
Chris Van Allsburg’s Zathura (2002) is a picture-book companion to Jumanji that trades jungle mayhem for cosmic peril. Told in Van Allsburg’s spare prose and rendered in moody black-and-white drawings, it follows two quarrelsome brothers whose living room becomes a spacecraft the moment they start a mysterious board game. The book uses the fantastical premise to examine sibling rivalry, responsibility, and the fragile boundary between domestic safety and the unknown.

Plot
Walter and Danny, restless and bickering, discover a long, dust-coated game box. Inside lies Jumanji, but tucked beneath it is another game they have never seen before: Zathura, a sleek, space-themed adventure. They set it up almost absentmindedly, spin, and move a small ship along the track. Instantly, a printed instruction appears, and the house lurches as meteors pummel the room, shredding curtains and denting furniture. What seemed like make-believe has become real.

Each turn deepens the hazard. A robot materializes, malfunctions, and menaces Walter with implacable logic. The house drifts dangerously near a ringed planet, its gravity tugging at carpets and lamps, threatening to pull the boys out through shattered windows. The brothers fumble their way forward, learning that the only path back to safety is to keep playing. Danny’s quick decisions and Walter’s reluctant courage become essential, though their reflexive sniping flares whenever the danger briefly ebbs.

The game’s space odyssey compresses wonder and fear. The living room window opens onto starfields; familiar objects float as if weightless; the quiet suburbs are replaced by a cold, indifferent void. When a final card warns of a black hole, the pull becomes irresistible. The house, the robot, and the boys themselves stretch toward oblivion, until everything snaps.

They are back where they began, the room intact, the night ordinary, the box between them. The memory of the journey remains. Walter, chastened, sees Danny not as a nuisance but as a partner who saved him; Danny, emboldened, trusts his brother. Without a word, they set the box aside and carry it out, choosing not to tempt fate again.

Characters
Walter, the older brother, starts the night impatient and dismissive, more interested in asserting status than listening. Crisis strips away his bluster, revealing fear, protectiveness, and the capacity to admit he was wrong. Danny, younger and imaginative, begins in Walter’s shadow but proves resourceful under pressure. Their transformation is the book’s heart: danger makes them depend on one another, and dependence becomes respect.

Themes
Zathura explores how play can test and reshape relationships. The game weaponizes sibling friction, forcing cooperation where stubbornness would invite disaster. It also repositions home as both sanctuary and launchpad, suggesting that the extraordinary lurks beneath the everyday. Fate and choice interweave; the boys do not control what the game delivers, but they control how they respond and whether they keep moving forward.

Style and Illustrations
Van Allsburg’s graphite drawings create cinematic depth and tension, setting delicate upholstery against hulking machinery and deep space. The compositions linger on tilted angles, drifting objects, and light falling across anxious faces. Sparse text heightens the images’ storytelling, letting readers feel the tilt of gravity and the hush of a room turned spacecraft.

Connection and Legacy
Echoing Jumanji’s conceit while offering a colder, more abstract landscape, Zathura stands on its own as a meditation on fear, wonder, and family. Its quiet, contained spectacle later inspired a louder film adaptation, yet the book’s lasting power lies in its intimate scale: two brothers, one room, and a universe that asks them to grow up together.