Jack and the Beanstalk

Today, I'm looking at images from Steven Kellogg's adaptation of "Jack and the Beanstalk." Kellogg is among the country's most-honored artists; his tall tales ("Johnny Appleseed," "Paul Bunyan") are especially beloved.

I like the illustrations in the tall tales, but the tales themselves feel episodic; they don't have characters I love. Maybe it's Sondheim's influence; I just prefer Jack, and Cinderella, and Red Ridinghood, and other fairy-tale characters.

"Jack and the Beanstalk" centers on an incautious boy. He trades his cow for magic beans. The beans are, in fact, magical; they yield an enormous beanstalk. Using the stalk, the boy begins to steal from an ogre couple up in the heavens. (The wife seems to aid and abet Jack; we might look more closely at the ogre marriage.) Eventually, a talking harp sells Jack out--but crafty Jack ensures that the beanstalk is sliced open, and the angry ogre spills down to his death, before he can seek revenge. Jack lives happily ever after.

I'm not sure Kellogg is endorsing Jack's actions; I think, mainly, he wants to draw the stalk stretching into the clouds, past the sun, and the ogre with his bug-eyes and his prehistoric tiger-pelt, and the light that falls on a cat in the countryside. People on Amazon worry that the images are "too scary." Maybe so. This would seem to be a tribute to the author. He has brought a bizarre fantasy world to life.

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