In the course of checking out my story on Spaceports and Spidersilks, I had fun reading the other stories. I particularly enjoyed “Jack and the Hot Doughnut Stalk,” by Scottie Watkins.
Jack’s family are feeling the pinch of the Great Recession. So his mother is upset when Jack spends the bread money on “doughnut seeds”: tiny dried-up doughnuts that look just like, um, a certain trademarked brand of breakfast cereal that won’t be named. When he plants them and climbs into the sky, we get great little descriptions, like a castle big enough to “drive a 747 through the front door.”
The giant is goofy rather than scary. Jack’s adventures gave me a good laugh. It all ends with a smile.
Writing Every Day 
You had me at “Great Recession.”
To be precise, the story doesn’t use exactly that phrase, but it clearly begins some time after September 2008. Mentioning the recession is just one part of how well the story uses contemporary references to update the original.