Jennifer L. Holm’s Full of Beans is a 2016 middle-grade historical novel set in 1934. Main character and first-person protagonist Beans Curry is a 10-year-old boy born and raised in Key West, Florida. The Great Depression causes difficulties for the locals of the dilapidated town, including Beans’s family. “New Dealer” Mr. Julius Stone, Jr. arrives with the plan to boost Key West’s failing economy by recreating it as a tourist destination, but Beans decides that working for resident criminal Johnny Cakes is a surer way to help his family get by. Winner of the Scott O’Dell Award and a New York Library Best Book for Kids (2016), the novel features themes of deceit and distrust in hard times, battling one’s conscience, and the benefits of teamwork and unity. This guide references the 2016 Random House Children’s Books library binding edition.

Plot Summary

Ten-year-old Beans Curry lives in Key West, Florida, in 1934. The ongoing Great Depression has caused the local economy to suffer. The town can no longer pay for services like trash collection, so garbage piles up in the streets. Factories and businesses are shut down, and Beans’s father, like many others, cannot find a job. “Conchs” (those born or having long resided in Key West) are struggling, and many do what it takes to get by. In the novel’s opening scene, Beans and his younger brother Kermit take the cans they scrounged from a day’s digging through garbage piles to Winky, a local man who promised to pay them a dime for 20. However, Winky claims the deal was for 50 cans and compels Beans to accept only a nickel for their work. Beans thinks adults often lie whenever it serves their purpose; Winky is a good example. Later, a newcomer named Mr. Julius Stone, Jr. arrives. He tells Beans and Kermit that President Roosevelt sent him to help Key West regain its economic footing. Beans think Mr. Stone is lying too.

Beans lives with his parents, Kermit, and three-year-old brother Buddy. He overhears his father Poppy telling Ma that he must go to New Jersey to find work, and once he does, he will send for the rest of the family. When Beans asks Poppy about moving, Poppy denies it; Beans again sees that one cannot trust grown-ups. As the summer days go by, Beans spends time with his gang; together with Ira, Pork Chop, and Kermit, Beans plays marbles and tries ideas to make money, such as selling pre-chewed homemade gum and cut-up fruit shaken from neighbors’ trees to fishermen. Another boy, Too Bad, wants to be in their gang and on their marble team (the Keepsies), but Beans does not allow it. A stray dog chooses Beans as his informal master; Beans names him Termite. Mr. Stone promises that Key West will experience redevelopment and economic salvation if the townspeople are willing to volunteer to refurbish it in time for the start of tourist season in December.

Ma asks Beans and Kermit to take Buddy for a wagon ride so she can do the laundry she takes in from neighbors for money. A local man known for his criminal initiatives, Johnny Cakes, notices their wagon. He asks if Beans would like to work for him. Beans hesitates, but when Winky brags about his control over Beans, Beans agrees; making money and proving Winky wrong now outweigh his obligation to be the “good boy” Ma and others think he is. His first criminal job goes well: Beans delivers Johnny Cakes’s liquor from Cuba—on which Johnny pays no government tax—to town proprietors in his wagon. Beans uses his payment to see a movie, one of his favorite pastimes. There, he notices a strange man in a fedora wearing gloves in the balcony.

The next job for Johnny Cakes is more complicated; Beans must obtain a fire alarm box key, use it to open one of the fire alarm boxes and ring a false alarm to distract authorities while Johnny Cakes moves liquor to his boat. Beans puts on an act of friendship with Too Bad, whose trustworthy family keeps one of the fire alarm box keys. Beans takes the key in between marble games with Too Bad; he pulls off the deed and returns the key the next day. Beans earns a nice payment, which he promptly spends by getting Ma expensive hand cream. Back at the movies, Beans sees that the man in gloves has leprosy. He and Beans chat; the man tells Beans he can only come out at night.

Soon, school begins; Kermit contracts rheumatic fever and must stay in bed. More “New Dealers” arrive to work for Mr. Stone; a few local volunteers help paint houses and spruce up the town.

When Johnny Cakes approaches Beans about pulling more alarms, guilt pesters Beans, but he follows through and completes the task because he worries more about his family’s financial prospects than possible consequences. He gives most of the money to Ma for use in spending on needed items, telling her it is the compensation from a woman who at first refused to pay for a dress Ma made. After the false alarms, the firemen are not inclined to race off to fight fires, so when Beans’s best pal Pork Chop’s house catches on fire, no firemen initially come. Beans runs the whole way to the station to convince them. He becomes known as a local hero for saving the street. Guilt over his real responsibility for the fire damage fills Beans; he wants to make up for what he did, so he volunteers for Mr. Stone and starts cleaning outhouses. Beans sees that Mr. Stone needs more help, though; Beans rounds up friends and classmates. The children’s efforts inspire more townspeople; soon, Key West is ready for tourists.

Tourism is a success for the people of the town. Beans, inspired by a reporter’s comments, decides that a “Diaper Gang” business stands to make the most money; both local mothers and those on vacation pay Beans and his helpers to keep their babies a few hours. By the novel’s end, Kermit is on the mend; Poppy gets a job in the Keys, so no move to New Jersey is necessary. Happy that Key West shows optimism and promise for the first time in a long while, Beans appreciates his friends, his actions, and his ability to learn from mistakes.