Blog Tour: Mighty Jack

October 3, 2016 Heidi Blog Tour, Book Review 1

Welcome to the next stop on the blog tour for Ben Hatke’s Mighty Jack! This book is an incredibly fun retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk. For this tour, each blog stop is posting about their favorite fairy tale retellings. I’ll also be sharing my thoughts on the book.

Jack might be the only kid in the world who’s dreading summer. But he’s got a good reason: summer is when his single mom takes a second job and leaves him at home to watch his autistic kid sister, Maddy. It’s a lot of responsibility, and it’s boring, too, because Maddy doesn’t talk. Ever. But then, one day at the flea market, Maddy does talk—to tell Jack to trade their mom’s car for a box of mysterious seeds. It’s the best mistake Jack has ever made.

What starts as a normal little garden out back behind the house quickly grows up into a wild, magical jungle with tiny onion babies running amok, huge, pink pumpkins that bite, and, on one moonlit night that changes everything…a dragon.

Favorite Fairy Tale Retellings:

I really fell in love with fairy tale retellings in college. I blame Robin McKinley’s Beauty. I had to read it for an adolescent literature class and I immediately went looking for everything else she wrote. Once I exhausted McKinley’s backlist, I jumped to other authors like Gail Carson Levine and Donna Jo Napoli. I am a complete sucker for fairy tale retellings! I love Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, Alethea Kontis’ Woodcutter Sisters, A.C. Gaughen’s Scarlet, and so many more. However, my very favorite is Holly Black’s White Cat, a retelling of The White Cat.

Cassel comes from a shady, magical family of con artists and grifters. He doesn’t fit in at home or at school, so he’s used to feeling like an outsider. He’s also used to feeling guilty; he killed his best friend, Lila, years ago.

But when Cassel begins to have strange dreams about a white cat, and people around him are losing their memories, he starts to wonder what really happened to Lila. In his search for answers, he discovers a wicked plot for power that seems certain to succeed. But Cassel has other ideas and a plan to con the conmen.

I was just so captivated by the world and the characters that Black created. It’s so vivid and captivating. The Curse Workers is the series I most want to see made into a television series. I would totally start watching television!

My Thoughts on Mighty Jack:

Mighty Jack was so much fun to read. I devoured it in one sitting and then immediately took it over to my sister’s house for my 10-year-old nephew.

The story and the artwork were both delightful. I love that this is a modern day retelling. It made the story all that much more magical. Here are some other things I loved:

How Jack gets the “magic beans”
Maddy, Jack’s sister
Lily! This girl is pretty awesome.
How hard Jack tries to do the right thing
The magical garden

And one of my most favorite aspects? Mighty Jack is the first in a series. That means more stories about Jack, Maddy, Lily, and company! YES!!! I cannot wait to see what’s in store for Jack beyond book one.