Waynetta and the Cornstalk: A Texas Fairy Tale
Kindergarten-Grade 3—Spunky cowgirl Waynetta and her mother live on a ranch where the lack of water has forced them to sell all but one of them. Finally, Ma has to ask her daughter to sell that "sorry-looking critter," but instead the girl exchanges it for some magic corn. In this exuberant reworking of "Jack and the Beanstalk," Waynetta reaches the top of a giant cornstalk to find "the biggest ranch she'd ever seen." Then she walks to the front door (readers must surmise that it belongs to a house) and is greeted by a giant woman who says, "I reckon you've come to take back the things my husband stole from your ma years ago." The giant, who looks like an old Wild West villain, arrives chanting, "Fee, fie, foe, fat,/I think I smell a cowgirl brat!/Fee, fie, foe, feet,/chicken-fried cowgirl is what I'll eat!" While Waynetta hides behind a giant-size bowl of beans, he brings out his treasures, "a longhorn no bigger than a barn cat" that deposits "a golden cowpat," a lariat that "never misses," and a "thimble-sized bucket" that "never runs out of water." Watercolor images in varying shades of brown with dramatic splashes of purples, reds, greens, and blues depict Waynetta's rickety old house surrounded by broken fences and desert landscape. A gun-toting, ax-wielding mother and other exaggerative characters accompany the rich Texan parlance that peppers this amusing read-aloud.—Kirsten Cutler, Sonoma County Library, CACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.