DADDY AND THE BEANSTALK

A father tells his daughter a most entertaining bedtime story.

Estella is getting bouncy, so her father, Andy, spins a yarn to settle her down. She requests a “little less than medium scary” tale, so he launches into a personalized version of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” On an errand to buy groceries, young Andy encounters a suspicious, pompadour-sporting man with a bag of magic beans. He buys them, his mom throws them out the window, a beanstalk sprouts, and Andy climbs it to a town above the clouds. Curious and hungry, Andy seeks hot dogs instead of treasure and discovers that the giant is a child. The bedtime story doesn’t deviate dramatically from the source material (though it has a happier resolution); the rapport between father and daughter is the real draw here. In Estella’s imagination, cowboys and stagecoaches filled the streets when her father was young, and she tries to suss out how Daddy could possibly have been a mischievous kid. Crandall’s bubbly illustrations serve the plot well, shining in sequences where a comparatively tiny Andy navigates the giant child’s home. Andy, Estella, and their family are dark-haired and olive-skinned; the giant presents white and looks plucked from a midcentury sitcom; and the giant’s monstrous peers have black, brown, and blue skin.

A cheerful, slightly snarky riff on a familiar fable.