Mighty Jack, A Graphic Novel by Ben Hatke

Rating: Not for me

Reading level: Mid-Elementary, Late Elementary

A modern Jack and the Beanstalk story, but with monster plants instead of giants.

Possible concerns:

• Hiding magic and experiences from parents. Jack and his sister experience fantastic monsters in the garden, and they hide it from mom.
• Trading with strangers. Jack give a man the family car in exchange for (magic) seeds.
• Eating foreign plants. Jack and his friends eat plants from the strange garden without checking first to learn whether they’re poisonous or have other negative effects.
• Trust. Jack’s mom keeps wanting to trust him, and he keeps taking hits in the trust department because of covering for the magic monsters that attack. I just don’t get why he doesn’t come clean. Sigh.
• Mom says, “Crap!”
• Single mom after dad left the family. She works two jobs, leaving childcare to Jack.
• Fantasy, monsters, dragons, portals to alternative worlds.
• Homeschooling. A neighbor girl says she homeschools and says it’s weird, but Jack says he thinks it’s cool.
• Danger. Jack enters another world to rescue sister, but without parents. The neighbor girl tells him all life is dangerous and goes with him.

Besides scary monsters, not too much to worry about; I just don’t like when kids hide things from their parents. The bad outweighed the good for me. Admittedly, I let my voracious reader read it, but afterwards we talked about all the things Jack did that my son *will not* do!!!

I preferred Zita Space Girl by the same author.