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FRANK AND BEAN by Jamie Michalak

FRANK AND BEAN

by Jamie Michalak ; illustrated by Bob Kolar

Pub Date: Oct. 8th, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9559-0
Publisher: Candlewick

A hilarious tale of hot dog meets bean.

With his campsite all set up in the great outdoors, solitude-seeking Frank (a bespectacled frankfurter in hat and bun) is more than ready to get down to business writing. But, alas, his “top secret” musings are interrupted by animals. Frank relocates a few times until he finds his desired level of peace and quiet. The next day, Bean (a kidney bean) arrives on the scene with a “HONK!” a “TOOT!” and a “BOOM!” Armed with a plethora of instruments and with a motorcycle atop his microbus, Bean—ever the musical fruit—makes all the noise he can as a “one-bean band.” Even so, Bean needs words in order to write a new song. Frank volunteers to help him. But whether Bean is too “loud” or too “messy,” Frank always finds something to frown about. Good gravy! Will the two ever get along? The Bert-and-Ernie–esque odd-couple pairing results in countless laugh-out-loud exchanges. Kolar’s digitally rendered full-color illustrations take the jokes one step further, offering expressive physical cartoon comedy that’s on a par with Michalak’s clever wordsmithing. Though most pages break up blocks of short text with illustrations, a few pages do reach a double-digit sentence count. With four chapters and a vocabulary of around 200 words and their variants, the story requires a fair degree of reading confidence.

Beanie weenies served just right for young campers.

(Early reader. 5-8)