Jack and those old beans!

I do love variations on a theme.

Picked up Jack and the Baked Beanstalk. Not your typical setting. Jack and his mother operate an old broken down burger truck in the city. It's a wonderful old vehicle and it sits right below an overpass. The illustrations are marvelous. Stimpson has had a long career in film animation, and it is surely evident in the drama and the lighting of his scenes.

Just following the LT Recommendations, I had to order a few more titles. Check back here.

I'm thinking of volunteering to put together a library display and spring activity for the library. Ideas are churning in my head.

Jack and the Giant Barbecue is a lot less successful. The Giant steals a recipe book compiled by Jack's deceased father and Jack goes up a mountain in West Texas to retrieve it. The Giant is an ignorant hick and a wastrel in a serious dump. The jukebox in his trashy joint is the co-conspirator, and slides down the mountain on giant rib bones as skis; followed by the giant in a red pickup.

The illustrator, John Manders does his best with the material, and there is humor in the pictures not specified in the text. It's not a style I appreciate - sloppy cartoon.

Huh! Not one bean in the whole gol-durned book.