Kate and the Beanstalk

Kate and the Beanstalk

Written by Mary Pope Osborne

Illustrated by Giselle Potter

Mary Pope Osborne, 2000

33 pages

Traditional Literature

            Everyone has heard the story Jack and the Beanstalk, right?  Well, Kate and the Beanstalk by Mary Pope Osborne is a variation of that well-known story.  The main character of this story is a girl named Kate, and she and her mother are forced to sell their only cow for money to buy food.  On the way to the market with the cow, Kate meets a beggar who offers her some magic beans in exchange for her cow.  She feels that this offer is too good to turn down, so she trades the cow for the beans.  Her mother is furious when she returns home with the beans, so she throws them out the window.  During the night, Kate wakes up and finds that a giant beanstalk has grown from the magic beans.  Filled with excitement, Kate begins to climb the beanstalk.  What will Kate find at the top of the beanstalk, and what adventures await her?  Read Kate and the Beanstalk to find out!

            Giselle Potter used pencil, ink, gouache, gesso, and watercolor to beautifully illustrate this book.  Although these types of illustrations are typically not my favorite, I think they work well with this story based on its content and setting.  Each illustration directly ties into the text by visualizing what is taking place.  She used a variety of page formats with the illustrations taking up most of the room on some pages and the illustrations taking up a small portion of the page on others.  She also used both single pages and doublespreads throughout the book to display her illustrations.

            This book would work well in any classroom ranging from second to fifth grade.  This book uses many adjectives, so the teacher could do a read aloud with it and have the students pick out any adjectives they hear as part of an adjective lesson.  It could also be used to teach new vocabulary using words like humble, plucky, and extraordinary, just to name a few.  This book could also be used in a compare and contrast lesson.  The class could read this book along with Jack and the Beanstalk, and they could compare and contrast the similarities and differences between the two.  Therefore, this book would be a great addition to any elementary teacher’s library.