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How Martha Saved Her Parents From Green Beans
by
THEY'RE MEAN.
THEY'RE GREEN.
THEY'RE THE BADDEST BEANS AROUND.
"Green beans are good for you. Green beans will make you big and strong." Martha doesn't believe what her parents tell her. And nothing will ever--EVER--make her eat them.
But when some beady-eyed, boot stomping beans bust into town and start causing trouble, Martha knows she has to take action against this gang of ...more
THEY'RE GREEN.
THEY'RE THE BADDEST BEANS AROUND.
"Green beans are good for you. Green beans will make you big and strong." Martha doesn't believe what her parents tell her. And nothing will ever--EVER--make her eat them.
But when some beady-eyed, boot stomping beans bust into town and start causing trouble, Martha knows she has to take action against this gang of ...more
Hardcover, 32 pages
Published
April 18th 2013
by Dial Books for Young Readers
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Community Reviews
Showing 1-30
My 6 year old loved this book and she hates veggies. What better recommendation can you get?
This is a FANTASTIC picture book. This is so much fun and so creative!
This is a creative little story with some great illustrations
This is the saga of Martha, her kidnapped parents, and the meanest green beans around. Martha hates eating green beans, a weekly family tradition. She is happy when she finds out the personified veggie villains have taken her parents, but she soon realizes life without her Mom and Dad will be lonely and sad. Martha and the beans have a cartoon stand-off and Martha saves the day by first swallowing her disgust, and then by swallowing green beans.
Upsides: The book is intentionally reminiscent of a ...more
Upsides: The book is intentionally reminiscent of a ...more
A fun read-aloud with a clever spin on why you should eat your vegetables.
Hilarious ending
Adroable! For every kid (and adult) who hates green beans!
I read this to my Summer Reading Children & to my nieces. Very cute little story!
Huge hit with students! A silly story about a girl who hates green beans and her opportunity to get revenge on them when they kidnap her green bean loving parents.
i hate green beans. i knew they were evil. i'm not sure i could eat them even to save my parents. yuck!! (age 5)
Really fun story, and my preschoolers loved it.
Mama read this to me tonight. It was a really silly book, and reminded me of Dan Yaccarino's The Lima Bean Monster - I love evil veggie books!
It's Not Easy Being Green
I usually don't buy books like this online on spec. I read an ARC or look at the book at the library or check it out and buy it at a bookstore. Kid picture books are just too pricey for taking flyers. But I couldn't resist this one, and I'm glad I didn't.
The whole Martha-hates-green-beans thing suggested we might be heading into precious territory. The whole kids-hate-vegetables cliche has never appealed to me as a surefire laugher. We're giving this to a grandchild who ...more
I usually don't buy books like this online on spec. I read an ARC or look at the book at the library or check it out and buy it at a bookstore. Kid picture books are just too pricey for taking flyers. But I couldn't resist this one, and I'm glad I didn't.
The whole Martha-hates-green-beans thing suggested we might be heading into precious territory. The whole kids-hate-vegetables cliche has never appealed to me as a surefire laugher. We're giving this to a grandchild who ...more
Title: How Martha Saved Her Parents from Green Beans
Author/Illustrator: David LaRochelle & Mark Fearing
Genre: Fantasy, Picture Storybook
Themes: Picky eaters
Plot Summary: Martha, a young girl, and her mom and dad eat green beans with their dinner on Tuesdays. Martha hates green beans. One Tuesday, with Martha unaware of how mean green beans could be, a gang of green beans barged into her house, tied up her parents, and took them away! At first, Martha was enjoying her parents not being home f ...more
Author/Illustrator: David LaRochelle & Mark Fearing
Genre: Fantasy, Picture Storybook
Themes: Picky eaters
Plot Summary: Martha, a young girl, and her mom and dad eat green beans with their dinner on Tuesdays. Martha hates green beans. One Tuesday, with Martha unaware of how mean green beans could be, a gang of green beans barged into her house, tied up her parents, and took them away! At first, Martha was enjoying her parents not being home f ...more
In Martha's family Tuesday nights mean green beans for dinner. Martha hates green beans and refuses to eat them. Every Tuesday her parents give her reasons why green beans are good and they she should, therefore, eat them.
Martha is proven right when a band of very bad green beans--complete with tattoos, villainous handlebar moustaches and wearing cowboy boots invade the town. They are on a mission of revenge: to capture anyone ...more
"They are both wrong," thought Martha.
"Green beans are bad. Very bad."
Martha is proven right when a band of very bad green beans--complete with tattoos, villainous handlebar moustaches and wearing cowboy boots invade the town. They are on a mission of revenge: to capture anyone ...more
With a title like this, I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this book but the cover told me that it was going to be a bit wacky.
Like many of us, Martha’s parents plan dinner on something of a schedule. Every single Tuesday, Martha’s family had green beans. For my son, this would have been a good thing but not for Martha. Martha’s parents assured her that green beans are good for her. They explained that they would make her strong.
Martha wasn’t buying it. Martha knew deep down that green bea ...more
Like many of us, Martha’s parents plan dinner on something of a schedule. Every single Tuesday, Martha’s family had green beans. For my son, this would have been a good thing but not for Martha. Martha’s parents assured her that green beans are good for her. They explained that they would make her strong.
Martha wasn’t buying it. Martha knew deep down that green bea ...more
Martha doesn’t want to eat her green beans at dinner. Her parents keep telling her how wonderful they are, but she really doesn’t want anything to do with them. One night as she is sitting and staring at the cold green beans on her plate (she is supposed to keep sitting there until she eats them even though her parents finished dinner ages ago), she hears a noise. When she goes to the other room she sees a note that the green beans have taken her parents. At first Martha is excited that she can
...more
This book was reviewed on My Sister's Bookkeeper: http://mysistersbookkeeper.blogspot.c...
I loved the unique story line in this book with the green beans being the bad guys. I think we all have kids who think that one particular food is horrible and would love to have a reprieve from eating it. I really enjoyed how the green beans were portrayed as being the enemy and being the bad guys. The pictures of them throughout the book are hilarious and just what we would imagine them to be as the bad g ...more
I loved the unique story line in this book with the green beans being the bad guys. I think we all have kids who think that one particular food is horrible and would love to have a reprieve from eating it. I really enjoyed how the green beans were portrayed as being the enemy and being the bad guys. The pictures of them throughout the book are hilarious and just what we would imagine them to be as the bad g ...more
I liked this more than I had expected to. Martha is left alone at the dinner table with a plateful of green beans. Martha refuses to eat them because "...[g]reen beans are bad. Very bad." Soon Martha discovers just how bad they are when a gang of mean green beans kidnap her parents. At first Martha is thrilled to be on her own, but quickly realizes that she misses her parents. After Martha saves her parents, it's decided that they'll forgo green beans for corn on the cob, broccoli, and a nice le
...more
Once again the title of this book hooked me! I for one have always liked vegetables, but there is something about the idea of desperado green beans facing down a little girl who can’t stand the sight of vegetables that is very funny to me. Mark Fearing’s illustrations go with David LaRochelle’s story very well. I love the image of the green bean bad guys! I think it is a great story that may be able to get a picky eater to fight off some evil vegetables by eating them. It is also a cute story wi
...more
Martha swears that green beans are horrible, vile things, but her parents don't believe her. Not until the night the green beans attack everyone who's ever made someone eat them, carrying off Martha's parents in the process. Now it's up to Martha to save her mom and dad, but it might require a bit of a sacrifice from the bean-averse girl.
This hilarious story is a lot of fun to read aloud, and many children will sympathize with Martha's dislike of green beans -- although some parents may not appr ...more
This hilarious story is a lot of fun to read aloud, and many children will sympathize with Martha's dislike of green beans -- although some parents may not appr ...more
Have you ever had the dreaded food item which you did not wish to eat? For my wife it was liver. When I shared this book with her yesterday she smiled ear-to-ear and said, "Boy, can I relate to this one!" While her meal of liver never kidnapped her parents I'm sure she pondered many ways of disposing of the liver itself.
This book would be a great read aloud for children and adults. I think it could also serve as a wonderful mentor text from which students could write their own tales of foods whi ...more
This book would be a great read aloud for children and adults. I think it could also serve as a wonderful mentor text from which students could write their own tales of foods whi ...more
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Age: K -2nd grade
Well, you don't run across this storyline very often in picture books. I loved how LaRochelle turned a hatred of food into a quest to save her parents from that very food. She was right all along! The ending was also unique in that Martha did not suddenly begin to enjoy eating green beans and therefore learned her lesson. Oh no. Her family steered clear of those pesky green beans and instead ate other inanimate, not intimidating vegetables.
Well, you don't run across this storyline very often in picture books. I loved how LaRochelle turned a hatred of food into a quest to save her parents from that very food. She was right all along! The ending was also unique in that Martha did not suddenly begin to enjoy eating green beans and therefore learned her lesson. Oh no. Her family steered clear of those pesky green beans and instead ate other inanimate, not intimidating vegetables.
Honestly, my expectations weren't that high for this book. I was very pleasantly surprised, I enjoyed this story a lot! It grabbed my attention and kept it throughout the story, which is more than I can say for another picture book I read about picky eaters *coughAFewBitescough*. How many stories do you have about your parents not letting you leave the table until you eat that something on your plate that you thought you absolutely detested? This story is sure to be a hit with families.
When Martha's parents are kidnapped by a mean gang of green beans, she springs to their rescue. Not right away of course. First she watches a bunch of TV and eats all the cookies. But eventually she confronts the bean leader. "'Let my parents go or I will eat you!'" She says. "The leader of the beans stepped forward and spat on the ground. 'You will not eat us,' he said with an evil sneer. 'You have never eaten a green bean in your life.'"
I happen to love green beans, and vegetables in general, but I've always been a picky eater in other ways so I can totally relate to Martha, and I suspect many kids can as well. Very funny story. Perfect ending. Illustrations are absolutely hysterical and enhance the text so symbiotically that it's hard to believe the author and illustrator are not the same person. And thank you for making the protagonist a girl.
Martha does not like green beans, no matter how good they are for her. So she refuses to eat them. Then one night, beady-eyed, boot-and-cowboy-hat-wearing green beans come into town and kidnap her parents. What's a girl to do? A rather ridiculous, but quite amusing, look at a picky eater and some shady green beans.
Martha hates eating green beans, but sometimes you've got no choice! This book is witty and very tongue in cheek about the whole concept of eating ones vegetables. Kids will definitely find this silly and enjoyable.
For: friends and enemies of green beans; discussions about food and healthy eating.
Possible red flags: disobeying parents; murdering sentient green beans through eating them.
For: friends and enemies of green beans; discussions about food and healthy eating.
Possible red flags: disobeying parents; murdering sentient green beans through eating them.
This was a cute story about a girl who hated to eat green beans. Kids and adults alike can see the humor in the situation. Martha reacts to her parents' kidnapping by the mean green beans in a way that many kids fantasize about; she eats everything she wants and stays up late watching her favorite movies. In the morning she sets about to take care of business and save the day.
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