by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 11, 2010

"It was cold outside. It was warm inside. A fine day for gingerbread..."

Jan Brett captures all the simple joys of life on a farm, then adds magical gingerbread man who - yes - comes to life. He runs around the kitchen, and when Matti's father comes in to investigate the delicious smell, of course the "gingerbread baby" is off in the outside world. Brett writes that he "rumbled and tumbled" when the family's tabby cat sprang off in pursuit, but in her illustration the cat ends up smiling happily, as the gingerbread baby rides away playfully on her back!

All the daring escapes keep the story moving at a fast pace. In the next illustration, the gingerbread baby climbs a vine to escape the family's basset hound. Later he does somersaults across the backs of the family's goats. He visits the well, where two neighborhood girls try to trick him. (One distracts him, while the other sneaks up with a bucket.) But the pesky gingerbread man ties their braids together in a know - and then rushes off down the road.

Jan Brett wrote and illustrated this story, and she uses a special "trademark" style that's especially suited for this stroy. Around each illustration, she draws a golden frame - and often inside her frames, she's tucked extra pictures of her characters. There's the cat watching the escaping gingerbread baby, and Matti making his own dough in the kitchen. But the keyholes through which she shows the characters...are shaped like dancing gingerbread men!

Matti formulates a plan, as the gingerbread baby continues his adventures. A pig tosses the gingerbread baby into the air, but he twists in the air and makes a hard landing on the pig's snout. He leaps over the railing of a bridge to a escape a crowd of villager that were closing in... He runs from a fox in the forest, and escapes in the milk can on a passing cart.

I love the detailed drawings that Brett draws, showing all the trees and every person in the village who's chasing that pesky gingerbread baby. "Now the milk and cheese man, the fox, the villagers, the mama pig, Martha and Madeline, the bleating goats, the barking dog, the meowing cat...were all after the Gingerbread Baby and getting closer." But my favorite illustration of all shows a beautiful clear, snow-covered field that's completely empty - except for an innocuous-looking gingerbread house.

And behind a tree, the little boy watches and waits...

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