Jack and the Beanstalk

by Alan Garner, Julek Heller (Illustrator)

Jack and the Beanstalk is one of our most enduring folktales. In his robust style, renowned British writer Alan Garner demonstrates why. Read aloud, this story will make you feel as if you are sitting by an English fireside, long ago, swapping tall tales with other storytellers. The language and its rhythm, derived from Garner's extensive research of old tales, sets this version apart from all previous texts.To complement the tale, Julek Heller has painted characters that come from trickster Jack to the thunderous giant -- even the beanstalk has its own mysterious personality.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

32 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 1992

About the author

Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

Born into a working-class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore in its plot and characters. Garner completed a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), but left the third book of the trilogy he had envisioned. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).

Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Saffron Moon]

This rating is for the edition adapted by Alan Garner and illustrated by Julek Heller. This version includes the bags of gold, a red hen that lays eggs of gold and the golden harp.

[Hilary]

I was browsing the shelves for a good classic fairy tale for my 5yo, and immediately grabbed this one when I saw Alan Garner's name. I was not disappointed - a great retelling of the classic story, with little touches here and there that reveal Garner's skill.

[Paola]

Jack and the beanstalk is a classic story that mostly everybody knows. The story begins with a boy and his mother, they were very poor and were about to sell their last cow to get more money. Instead the boy gets magic beans and plants them. The next day a big plant up to the sky grew. Jack climbed three times to the house of a giant. Each time robbing something different from him, gold, a hen that made golden eggs, and a harp. The third time he got caught, the giant tried to get him but failed and died. Jack and his mother were happy in the end.

The book has illustrations that look like a classic painting. The author uses frames as well as full bleed for the images. It gives the book a change of view for the reader to be entertained. It has a couple of pages with double spread. The medium used in this book was water colors. It was interesting how the author used various features to produce this piece. As a classic story, you can see why the illustrator chose to make the pictures with a classical look.

I liked this book, not as much as I have liked others but it was good. I prefer books with illustrations more modern rather than classical but I enjoyed reviving childhood memories when reading the book.

[Stephanie Klaren]

This exciting adventure is similar to the original story where Jack climbs a Beanstalk and steals from a giant. This would work in a compare and contrast with other versions of Jack and the Beanstalk.