Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Jack & the Beanstalk: Sharkey illustrations: 2019 reissue
Author: WALKER RICHARD (RETOLD BY)
Illustrator: SHARKEY NIAMH
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 01/06/2019
Imprint: BAREFOOT BOOKS
Price: $15.00
Publishing status: Active
Library Journal (11/01/1999):
K-Gr 3-This retelling of the English folktale departs in many ways from the well-known version by Joseph Jacobs, and although Walker tells a consistent and humorous story, it is ultimately devoid of much of the suspense and characterization of the original. Jack trades his cow to a strange man for six magic beans, for which he’s “lost the instructions.” They do what readers expect them to, and Jack climbs the beanstalk to a castle inhabited by a giant and a “little old woman.” In a single visit, the boy steals a sack of gold, taking along the golden-egg-laying goose and the little old lady because they ask to come, and the singing harp that gives him away. At the bottom, he uses the rope that he used to lower the bag of gold (a complicated addition to the plot) to catapult the giant into outer space. Jacobs’s Jack was not altogether a good child-but the giant was many times worse, and it took a devious mind like Jack’s to get the better of him. Walker’s Jack is very nice, but lacks motivation and is not very interesting. The book is nicely designed, and Sharkey’s oil-and-gesso illustrations in a muted palette are well composed, but the figures (with big heads and feet, and dot-and-line faces) are flat and expressionless. Steven Kellogg’s illustrated retelling (Morrow, 1991) is still available for those who need a picture-book version of the tale; this one is pretty but unsatisfying. Think twice before you trade your cow for it.-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
ISBN: 9781782854166
Dimension: 275mm X 216mm