Another book adaptation of a Disney classic.
The illustrations are truly wonderful - appearing almost as screenshots from the original 1942 feature. A nice touch is the before and after double pages of Happy Valley as a lush and prosperous land and then as dried up and miserable. We had fun switching back and forth between the images.
There were a few rushed parts in the text itself which were a bit jarring to the story, such as when 'Mickey followed, flying on a popped cork!' - from where? In the film it was explained well, but not in the book adaptation.
Still a very nice bright and cheerful adaptation from Disney's Wonderful World of Reading book club series. ( )

This tale is a spin-off of Jack and the Beanstalk. Instead of Jack, the characters are Mickey, Donald and Goofy. This tale starts out with friends, Mickey, Donald and Goofy. They are very poor and the only things that they have are an old cow and a jar of beans. They are soon down to their last bean and they decide to send Mickey to trade their old cow for some more food. Mickey meets an old woman and she tells Mickey she will trade her "magic" beans for the old cow. Mickey agrees and when he returns, his friends are very disappointed with Mickey's choice. They throw the beans out the window and to Mickey's surprise he sees a beanstalk growing up to the sky. He climbs the beanstalk and finds a castle of a giant. Mickey gets into precarious situations but each time he takes something very precious to the giant. The very last time he is in the castle, the giant awakens and chases Mickey down the beanstalk. It is up to the brave Mickey to chop down the beanstalk.

This book was my husband's when he was a child. He has read it to both of our boys many, many times. I can tell it is a favorite just by listening to them read it together. I think my children really love to hear it because the main character is Mickey Mouse and they can relate to this character. They love to hear and say the repetitive part of the giant, "Fee-fi-fo-fum" over and over.

I would like to give my students a little jar of "magic beans" and have them write a short tale of what "magic" their beans have. Once they have finished their short story creation, they can illustrate with pictures and read them to the class.

#55, 2006

This is an old Disney book which we’ve read dozens of times over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever counted it before, so here goes. It casts Mickey in the role of Jack in an otherwise standard version of this fairy tale. and is one of my son’s favourite bedtime books, because we have so much fun doing silly character voices, and adding additional dialogue and text to the story when we read it, ending up with a rather subversive, and non-traditional telling of the Jack and the Beanstalk story. Things like, “And then Mickey, that verminous little thief, stole the giant’s bag of gold, even though the giant had never done ANYTHING bad to Mickey,” and “Mickey threw down the bag of gold, where it bashed Donald Duck in the head. Fortunately, he wasn’t harmed, since he doesn’t have a brain,” and “Then Mickey MURDERED the giant by chopping down the beanstalk,” and “The three friends lived happily ever after, until the bad karma of Mickey’s evil actions caught up with them, and they were all reincarnated as slugs.” Stuff like that. Oh, and I usually do the giant’s dialogue in my best Dame Edna voice.

It’s a hoot to read it this way, and I feel like I’m giving my son a bit of a moral lesson, too. While we may go a bit overboard in villifying poor Mickey, really, this IS a messed up story. Mickey/Jack basically breaks and enters into this giant’s castle, steals his stuff, and then murders him so he doesn’t get in trouble. No provocation – and we can assume that the harp, at least, was happy where she was, or she wouldn’t have called out to the giant when she was being kidnapped, right? LOL! So, we have a lot of fun with this book, even though, as books go, it’s not particularly inspired. It’s also not a good bedtime book, since we always end up laughing hysterically over something or other, which isn’t particularly condusive to getting my son to sleep soon afterwards. All things considered, though, 8/10 for sustained entertainment value.

LJ Discussion ( )