The Giant and the Beanstalk
Kindergarten-Grade 3–Despite his fearsome appearance, Otto, a young giant who lives in a magical kingdom high above the human world, is gentle and polite. When his beloved pet chicken is stolen by the human Jack, he descends the beanstalk to try and retrieve her. After being misdirected to every other nursery-rhyme Jack in town, Otto finally finds the culprit. The giant realizes that the boy only wanted to sell Clara so that he could retrieve his own lost pet, Milky White the cow, and the two find a way to retrieve their adored animals. All ends happily as the other giants recognize Otto's heroic qualities, and Jack and his mother open a roadside stand to sell soup mix, made, of course, from beans. While the sharp satire and social commentary that ran throughout Stanley'sRumpelstiltskin's Daughter(HarperCollins, 1997) are missing here, the point-of-view reversal is amusing and the plot and characters are nicely developed. The watercolor illustrations depict a cozy, bucolic fairy-tale world and are replete with humorous details. This is a worthy addition to the growing canon of fractured fairy tales.–Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.