Gingerbread Baby

Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby is not about to get eaten in this delicious twist on a favorite Christmastime tale

It all begins when Matti opens the oven too soon and out jumps a cheeky little Gingerbread Bay. He leads Matti's mother and father, the dog and the cat, and a whole colorful cast of characters on a rollicking chase through the village and into the forest, staying just out of reach, daring them to catch him along the way.

But Matti's not with them. He's at home in the borders making what turns out to be a gingerbread house into which the Gingerbread Baby runs. Only Matti knows he is safely inside. And readers will too when they look under the lift-the-flap gingerbread house at the end of the story, and there he is

Author: Jan Brett
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Published: 10/04/1999
Pages: 33
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 9.31h x 11.34w x 0.42d
ISBN: 9780399234446
Audience: Ages 4-8

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 3.5
Point Value: 0.5
Interest Level: Lower Grade
Quiz #/Name: 34613 / Gingerbread Baby

Award: Buckaroo Book Award - Nominee
Award: Bookseller's Choice - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/20/1999 pg. 88
Ingram Advance 10/01/1999 pg. 26
Kirkus Review - Children 11/01/1999 pg. 1739
Booklist 11/15/1999 pg. 633
Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/1999 pg. 30 - Below Average, With Minor Flaw
Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2000 pg. 30 - Below Average, With Minor Flaw
Library Journal 11/01/1999

About the Author
With over thirty four million books in print, Jan Brett is one of the nation's foremost author illustrators of children's books. Jan lives in a seacoast town in Massachusetts, close to where she grew up. During the summer her family moves to a home in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts.

As a child, Jan Brett decided to be an illustrator and spent many hours reading and drawing. She says, I remember the special quiet of rainy days when I felt that I could enter the pages of my beautiful picture books. Now I try to recreate that feeling of believing that the imaginary place I'm drawing really exists. The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope others as well, that such places might be real.

As a student at the Boston Museum School, she spent hours in the Museum of Fine Arts. It was overwhelming to see the room-size landscapes and towering stone sculptures, and then moments later to refocus on delicately embroidered kimonos and ancient porcelain, she says. I'm delighted and surprised when fragments of these beautiful images come back to me in my painting.

Travel is also a constant inspiration. Together with her husband, Joe Hearne, who is a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Jan visits many different countries where she researches the architecture and costumes that appear in her work. From cave paintings to Norwegian sleighs, to Japanese gardens, I study the traditions of the many countries I visit and use them as a starting point for my children's books.