Jack and the Beanstalk a personalised book with your child as the hero

Once upon a time there was a boy called Jack who lived with his mother in a little cottage at the end of a village. They were very poor. One morning Jack's mother opened the cupboard and found nothing in it but one thin coin.

"There's nothing else for it," she sighed. "Our cow will have to go to market. Take her into town, Jack, and sell her for the best price you can get."

So Jack put a rope round the cow's neck and set off down the road. He had not gone far when he met a strange little man with a bright eye and a pointed hat.

"Good morning, Jack," said the little man. "Where are you off to with that fine cow?"

"To market, to sell her," said Jack.

The little man opened his hand. In it lay five speckled beans, shining like pebbles in a stream.

"I'll give you these for your cow," he said. "They're magic beans. Plant them tonight, and by morning they'll have grown right up to the sky."

Jack had never seen beans like them, and he wanted very much to believe in magic. So he handed over the cow and ran all the way home with the beans in his fist.

"Magic beans?" cried his mother. "You swapped our cow for a handful of beans? Oh, Jack!" And she sat down at the table and cried.

Jack felt dreadful. But that night, when his mother had gone to bed, he crept out into the dark garden and planted the beans by starlight, one by one, in a neat row. "Just in case," he whispered.

When Jack woke up the next morning, his room was full of green light. He ran to the window and there, where he had planted the beans, stood an enormous beanstalk. Its leaves were as big as tablecloths, and it twisted and climbed up and up, right through the clouds, until he couldn't see the top of it.

Jack did not stop to think. He climbed out of the window, took hold of the beanstalk and began to climb. He climbed and climbed and climbed, past the rooftops and the birds and the treetops, until at last he poked his head up through the clouds.

Above the clouds lay a wide, strange country, and a long white road ran across it towards a castle. And the castle was enormous. Its door was so high that Jack could have walked under the letterbox without bending his head.

Jack squeezed in under the door and found himself in a hall as big as a church. On the table sat a loaf of bread the size of a haystack, a fat brown goose in a basket, and a golden harp with a woman's face carved at the top.

Just then the floor began to shake. Boom. Boom. Boom. A voice like thunder rolled through the hall:

"Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell a little Englishman!"

Jack dived behind the loaf of bread and held his breath. Into the hall stomped a giant, so tall that his head brushed the rafters. He sniffed the air, and sniffed again.

"It's only your supper you can smell," called a woman's voice from the kitchen. "Sit down and eat it." The giant's wife was a kindly sort, and she had seen Jack come in.

So the giant sat down and ate his supper. Then he said to the goose, "Lay!" and the goose laid an egg. It was made of shining gold. Then he said to the harp, "Sing!" and the harp sang all by itself, so sweetly that the giant's eyes grew heavy, and his head nodded, and soon he was snoring like a thunderstorm.

Jack crept out from behind the bread. The goose looked at him with one bright eye and laid another warm golden egg.

"Would you like to come down and live in a garden?" Jack whispered. "There's grass, and a pond, and nobody would shout at you."

The goose thought about it and nodded. And the harp sang softly, "Take me too. I'm so tired of lullabies."

So Jack tucked the goose under one arm and the harp under the other and tiptoed towards the door. But as he slipped underneath it, the harp's strings brushed the doorframe and rang out with a loud, bright twang.

The giant woke with a roar. "Who's there? Stop, thief!" And he came thundering after Jack along the white road, every step shaking the clouds.

Jack ran faster than he had ever run in his life. He reached the top of the beanstalk and swung himself down, leaf by leaf, as fast as he could go. Above him the whole stalk swayed and creaked as the giant began to climb down after him.

"Mother!" shouted Jack, as soon as he could see the cottage roof. "Mother! Bring the axe!"

His mother ran out with the axe. Jack jumped the last little way to the ground, took the axe and chopped at the beanstalk with all his strength. Chop! Chop! Chop! The beanstalk shivered. Far above, the giant stopped, peered down, and scrambled back up into the clouds as quickly as he could.

With one last chop, the great beanstalk swayed and fell. It came down across the fields with a crash like a hundred trees, and the road to the clouds was closed for good. The giant stayed up in his castle in the sky, grumbling to his wife, and he never came down to bother anybody.

As for Jack and his mother, they were never poor again. The goose lived happily in their garden beside a little pond, and every morning it laid one golden egg, so the cupboard was always full and there was always enough to share with the neighbours. And every evening the golden harp sat in the garden and played all by itself, and the whole village came to listen.

Jack's mother never said another word about the cow.