How Martha Saved Her Parents from Green Beans

March 15, 2013
A little girl who never eats green beans resorts to extreme measures when a mob of rogue beans kidnaps her parents in this twisted take on cleaning your plate. Martha's parents serve green beans for dinner every Tuesday and always tell her how good they are for her. But Martha knows green beans are really bad. "Very bad." She's vindicated when a "gang of mean green beans," with "black beady eyes and long curly mustaches" and wearing "cowboy hats and sharp pointy boots," swaggers into town, terrorizing anyone who's ever advocated eating green beans. After the dastardly beans kidnap her parents, Martha's initially elated to be on her own, but by morning, she misses them. When she finds the beans holding her parents hostage, Martha threatens to eat the beans if they won't let her parents go. The beans don't take Martha seriously, as she's never eaten a green bean in her life. Will Martha hold her nose and eat the beans, or will she let the bad beans rule? Dramatically comic illustrations rely on bold colors as well as exaggerated gestures and facial expressions to heighten the absurd. With their silly black hats, boots, mustaches and eyes, the spindly green beans actually do look menacing enough to steal the show. A must for picky eaters. (Picture book. 5-8)

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March 1, 2013

PreS-Gr 2-A hilarious spin on the kid who doesn't like to eat vegetables. Every Tuesday, Martha's family has green beans for dinner, and every Tuesday Martha refuses to eat them. No matter what her parents say, she thinks green beans are bad, and she is proven right one day when a gang of hat-wearing, moustache-sporting, beady-eyed green beans swaggers into town. "Anyone who had ever said, 'Eat your green beans, ' was in big, big trouble." The villainous vegetables kidnap Martha's parents, leaving the youngster free to toss her plate of cold green beans out the window and stay up late eating cookies. But a life of total freedom and junk food isn't all that it's cracked up to be, so Martha makes the ultimate sacrifice by rescuing her parents from the beans, using the only means she has... she eats them! Laugh-out-loud illustrations in a palette of saturated colors pit round-faced, red-haired Martha against the tall, thin beans, whose menacing expressions and Western references make them a funny foe. With a wacky premise and a perfect tone, this saga is sure to please vegetable haters everywhere.-Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013
A surly gang of green beans kidnaps Martha's parents. She soon realizes, with a pinched nose, that to save them she must consume every last one of her least favorite vegetable. Witty text matched by humorously rendered mustachioed, marauding green beans will speak to any veggie-dreading child who has heard (and any parent who's said) "eat your green beans!"

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)