Jack and the Beanstalk is an English fairy tale. The earliest known appearance in print is Benjamin Tabart's moralised version of 1807. It is the best known of the "Jack tales", a series of stories featuring the archetypal Cornish and English hero and stock character Jack.
In this story, Jack is a young boy living with his widowed mother and a milk cow who is their only source of income. When the cow stops giving milk, Jack's mother has Jack take the cow to the market to be sold. On the way, he meets an old man who offers "magic beans" in exchange for the cow and Jack makes the trade. When he arrives home without any money, his mother becomes furious, throws the beans to the ground and sends Jack to bed.
A gigantic beanstalk grows overnight which Jack climbs to a land high in the sky. There he comes to a house that is the home of a giant. He asks at the door for food and the giant's wife takes him in. When the giant returns, he senses that a human is nearby:
Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
Jack is hidden by the giant's wife and he overhears the giant counting money. When the giant sleeps, he steals a bag of gold coins and makes his escape down the beanstalk.
Jack returns up the beanstalk twice more. Each time he is helped by the wife, although she grows increasingly suspicious of him. He learns of other treasures and steals them when the giant sleeps: first a goose that lays golden eggs (the most common variant is a hen; compare the idiom "to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs."), then a harp that plays by itself. However, the giant is woken when Jack leaves the house with the harp. The giant chases him down the beanstalk and Jack calls to his mother for an axe. Before the giant reaches the ground, Jack cuts down the beanstalk, causing the giant to fall to his death. Jack and his mother then live happily ever after with their riches that Jack stole from the giant.
Now your child can enjoy this timeless classic tale in Chinese. Each page contains charming, colorful cartoon illustrations, the Chinese characters and the Pinyin (phonetic transcriptions). A great way to teach children how to recognize Chinese characters and read them!
