Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack and the Beanstalk

Author E. Nesbit

Illustrator Matt Tavares

Candlewick 2006

48 pages

Children’s Traditional Literature

This is the famous story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack’s mother asks him to go to town and sell the family cow for money; however that’s not what Jack does. Jack sells the cow for magic beans that his mother throws out of the window thinking her son was foolish. Not long after there is a giant bean stalk outside the window that Jack climbs to find adventure. Once at the top he is greeted by the giant’s wife. Hungry Jack asks for food and she lets him in and feeds him, the giant upon arriving thinks that he smells Jack however his wife convinces him it’s not. Jack then takes some of the giants gold and climbs down the stalk to his mother and they go buy food. Once out of food Jack returns this time to get a golden egg from the hen. Pleased again his mother goes and buys food. However Jack is not completely happy with this so he returns once more, and this time it’s a doozy.

                The pictures in this story are very bold and colorful. This actual book got noticed for the incredible way that the illustrations were finally portrayed for Jack and the Bean Stalk. The text in the story varied on the page. The text went from the top to bottom, as well as the illustrations. Matt Tavares is a notable illustrator, and the take that he took on this classic story is a great one. I think that the middle elementary school children would enjoy this book even more because of how it has been “updated”. Jack and the bean stalk is such a good classic children’s book it is hard to not love it. The medium used in this book was pen and ink, as well as water colors and colored pencils.

                Classroom connections for this story can unlimited, you can do math and science lessons with the class. A math lesson could be making a “giant” shoe for a math center. You can have your students count how big the Giant’s shoe is with counting blocks using 1’s, 5’s, and 10’s. A science lesson you can plant beans with your class and watch what magic grows and they can record what they see in their science journal. Lastly you can have the students write what they would have liked the most about traveling up the giants bean stalk.