I loved this book! I was looking for the regular Jack and the Beanstalk book but I stumbled upon this one instead. I have to say it was really good. I enjoyed how it was intertwined into modern society. I appreciate how this book showed a family with a little café start to struggle as an overpass was built. This left the café with few customers. The family was down to the last of their money. Jack went out against his mother’s advice and bought a magical can of baked beans instead of what he was supposed to buy. This started the adventure, which eventually turned the café into a great success. I think this book has a place in every classroom. ( )

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.

This is the illustrator's first book he's written and illustrated, but I'm excited to see his other work as well. He's spent most of his career working in film animation. His visuals are crazy interesting and good. ( )

I'd use this in a third grade class and have the students compare and contrast the characters in the story in a vein diagram . I'd also use this in a second grade class and have the students describe the setting of the story with descriptive language.

I would present this book to a 7th grade class and they will have to compare and contrast this version of the story to other versions they have heard. This will also work to explain about folk tales and how they can change. They will have a writing prompt where they will have to compare and contrast the two versions and explain why they think these changes happened. Another activity I would do with this book would be regarding predictions of events. Most students at this point would be familiar with the story about Jack and the bean stalk. So I would do an interactive read aloud and ask them to make predictions about the events in the story and see if the actualy events in this story match their predictions.

I would use this book in a 3rd grade classroom as a read aloud. I would use this book in order for the students to build their comparing and contrasting skills. Before reading this book, I would have read the original story of Jack and the Beanstock to the students. Then students would have to compare and contrast the two stories to show that they understand both. They will have to compare and contrast the characters, the setting and the ending. I would also use this book in a 2nd grade classroom to work on setting. I would use it as a read aloud to see how much to obtain from the reading. After the reading they would have to go back to their seats and draw a picture of one part of the setting with three descriptive words to go along with it. This will help them to identify what a setting is and how it plays a key role in the story.