Gingerbread Christmas

September 26, 2016
Brett celebrates the holidays with the cheery hero of Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends and his friend Matti, who once again bails out his confectionary pal. When Gingerbread Baby hears about the Christmas Festival, he announces that he will sing with his Gingerbread Band (which doesn’t exist), so Matti bakes up a batch of gingerbread instruments. Their performance is a hit, until a girl identifies them as cookies, and Matti quickly camouflages them with snow to prevent the audience from devouring them. Gingerbread Baby taunts the crowd to chase him, and the clever hiding spot he finds, revealed in a festive Christmas tree pop-up, lets readers do a little seek-and-find of their own. In her signature style, Brett frames her pages with intricate themed borders that supplement or foreshadow the story’s action; featuring candies, gingerbread, and ornate loops of icing, they look good enough to eat. Ages 3–5.

Brett's Gingerbread Baby skips in for his third story, this time celebrating Christmas in a Swiss Alpine village setting with a band of anthropomorphic gingerbread instruments.The Gingerbread Baby's human pal, a white boy named Matti, helps his cookie friend achieve his wish for his own band by baking and decorating a batch of gingerbread musical-instrument ornaments. The cookies all perform in the bandstand at the town Christmas festival in front of a large crowd of dancing townspeople in traditional costumes and friendly animals. A girl in a red coat points out that the instruments are really cookies, setting off an extended chase for tasty snacks, as in traditional versions of "The Gingerbread Man." Matti turns the ornaments into little snowmen to hide them from the townspeople, and the Gingerbread Baby himself escapes and hides in the branches of the village Christmas tree, decorated with dozens of ornaments and sweets. The Christmas tree is a large pop-up feature within the last spread, constructed of laminated paper that should hold up to multiple Christmas seasons. Brett again uses her signature style of ornamental borders and side panels to extend the story, with borders of frosting and candies and panels including dancing children of different ethnic groups. Fans of Brett's intricately detailed illustration style will find this a sweet treat. (Picture book. 4-7) COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2016

PreS-Gr 2-In this third book about Gingerbread Baby, the cookie takes part in the town's Christmas Festival. Matti bakes a batch of gingerbread instruments, and Gingerbread Baby takes the stage with his band. All is well until a little girl realizes that these instruments are edible. Matti disguises the instruments, and Gingerbread Baby hides in the foldout Christmas tree. VERDICT Brett's signature border designs and detailed scenes of a folkloric Swiss village make this more suitable for sharing at home than at storytime venues with larger audiences.-Virginia Walter, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

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