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PICTURE BOOKS
John, Jory

The Cool Bean

40 pp. | HarperCollins/Harper | December, 2019 | Trade ISBN 978-0-06-295452-7 $18.99
(2) K-3 Illustrated by Pete Oswald. This third collaboration about an endearing food staple features John's and Oswald's trademark humor-wrapped-around-a-message that made The Bad Seed and The Good Egg (rev. 3/19) so entertaining. This time it's a cool-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder tale starring three beans (cool ones, natch) who rule the school, and our wide-eyed, bow-tie-wearing protagonist who used to be their friend "in the olden days, last year." Our bean tries to earn a place in the lima-light: "I wore sunglasses...I slicked my hair back," but the changes don't feel right. The misfit bean resigns itself to loneliness ("I lived my life and things were just...okay") until some surprising acts of kindness cause it to reevaluate assumptions about its former--or are they?--BFFs. Witty wordplay ("I was officially a has-bean") and silly gags in the digital and watercolor illustrations (The Great Gatsbean, A Midsummer Night's Bean, Leguma Beach]) help downplay the didacticism and up the cool factor.
Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2020

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