Book Review: Gingerbread Baby

This week’s featured book is Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. I love Jan Brett’s detailed and intricate illustrations. In contrast, her stories are typically fairly straightforward and simple. My kids have always been delighted with her books and tend to ask for them to be read again and again.

So, we need a few activities to go along with Gingerbread Baby. For the real moms among us, who want to do something fun, but feel a little pressed for time or energy this is the activity for you:

Storytime with Grandma
One of our grandmas doesn’t live very close, but she can still read stories to my kids. Jan Brett’s books are popular enough that grandma or grandpa or another special person could easily check this book out from the library. Then arrange a convenient time with Grandma and make a phone call. Put her on speaker phone, hand your child his copy of the book and let Grandma read the story to your child. You may need to remind Grandma to tell your child when to turn the page. Maybe Grandma is tech-savvy enough to make a recording of the book on a CD or as a sound file on the computer. You might be able to get a digital video recording or even do a teleconference on Skype. However you manage to connect across the miles, this is definitely a book worth sharing with a special family member, no matter what the distance.

More real mom activities can be found by visiting Jan Brett’s homepage. There you can can design and print your own Gingerbread Baby and your own Gingerbread Baby House. I should let you know that I had problems using this website on a Mac with both Safari and Firefox. It works if you’re on a PC with Internet Explorer.

For the super moms among us, you can find instructions, recipes and patterns for gingerbread houses online in many places. If you need to simplify this activity a little bit, you might consider using graham crackers to build the house.

Also, you might find that simply making gingerbread babies is plenty of fun for most kids. For this you don’t need to do the cutting the pattern and building the house stages. Arm yourself with a person-shaped cookie-cutter and move right on to the icing and candy decorating parts!

Tags: book reviews, cooking, reading