Gingerbread Baby

Gingerbread Baby

Author:  Jan Brett

Genre: Children's Fiction

Grade Level:  Preschool and Up

Theme: Rhyming

Summary:  This beautifully written and illustrated story is a retelling of the tale The Gingerbread Man.  In this version a boy, Matti, and his mother are home baking gingerbread cookies.  Matti is impatient and opens the oven early not to see a gingerbread man, but out jumps a gingerbread baby.  Gingerbread baby goes along his way singing:

"I am the Gingerbread Baby,

Fresh from the pan.

If you want me,

Catch me if you can."

The gingerbread baby outsmarts everyone including the mother, father, cat, dog, goats, pigs and others.  The only one able to outsmart this gingerbread baby is Matti as he makes a gingerbread house and traps the gingerbread baby.

Pre-Reading Activity:  Talk about different animals that children have or that children see outside, i.e. dog, cat, chipmunk, squirrel.  Ask the children if, "if you animal got loose outside, how would you catch it?"  Make a chart of all of the different answers that your students come up with.

Post-Reading Activity:  If the children have read The Gingerbread Man, ask them the differences between that story and this story.  Have talk to their elbow partner about a different way that they could have caught the gingerbread baby and then they can write about it. 

And of course, if you read this story around the holidays to your students as I do, I always like to finish with baking or decorating gingerbread babies and/or houses.

Reflection:  I absolutely love this story and all Jan Brett books.  She always keeps us entertained and her spin on books is neat.  I love how she always puts a sneak peak of the next page on the right side of the page before.  This story is truly unique and I like that the gingerbread baby does not get eaten at the end, a more kid friendly version than the gingerbread man.

About the Author Jan Brett

    With over thirty seven 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."

Interesting Things I Found:

My son Bryan and I recently had the privilege of meeting Jan Brett at one of her book signings.  She signed my son's book and talked to him for a bit about cooking and baking, one of my sons interests.  It made his whole day.  Although we had to wait in line for what seemed to be an eternity, It was great that she took the time to have a conversation with everyone that came.

Jan Brett has amazing activities on her webpage for all of  her books:

http://janbrett.com/activities_pages.htm

Wondering why Jan Brett wrote The Gingerbread Baby, find out here...

If you have the time, watch this video of Jan Brett drawing her famous "gingerbread baby":