Jack: The True Story of Jack & the Beanstalk

Liesl Shurtliff's Jack: The True Story of Jack & the Beanstalk is a lively fairy-tale adventure for 10 year olds about a boy who has always wanted to meet a giant.

What happens

Jack is twelve and he's named after his great-great-great (and lots more greats) grandfather, who supposedly conquered nine giants. Mama says that's all hogwash. There's no such thing as giants. And the family is as poor as dirt.

So Jack is stuck on the family farm, bored silly and very good at mischief. He once gave the grumpy neighbour a sack of "sugar" that was actually salt. You can probably guess how that plum pudding went.

Then Miss Lettie Nettle's prize cabbages vanish overnight, roots and all. A travelling tinker with a wooden leg swears giants took them. Everyone laughs at him. Everyone except Jack.

A few nights later it rains dirt, the sky splits open and two enormous giants climb down on ropes. They strip the farm. They take the whole village. And they take Papa, still clinging to the newborn calf, stuffed into a giant's pocket.

That's a big moment, and it's worth knowing it happens early. Jack's mum is hurt when a tree crashes through the house and she ends up with a broken leg. It's scary stuff, but it's told in Jack's cheeky voice, so it never gets too heavy.

What would you swap your only cow for? Jack swaps his for three beans the size of apples (Mama is NOT impressed).

Part of the fun is that you already know the story. Hearing it from Jack himself makes it so much better. He's naughty and brave and a bit of a show-off, and he grumbles all the way through his chores. There's a knight in rusty armour who is the most useless hero ever, and Jack's little sister Annabella turns out to be tougher than he thinks.

Once the beanstalk grows, the adventure moves up into the giants' land, where everything is super-sized and there's something very important to get back.

If you've got a reader who likes the stories they know turned inside out, this is a great pick.

What to read next

For another fairy tale told by the boy at its heart, try Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin. Rump is twelve too, and stuck with a name the whole village laughs at.