Ginger Bear - Hardcover

Mini Grey is "one of the brightest new stars on the picture book scene" according to the Financial Times. Traction Man Is Here! won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, is the New York Times Best Illustrated, and an ALA Notable, and has five starred reviews. Her most recent book, The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon received three starred reviews. She lives in Oxford, England.

PreSchool-Grade 2—This edgy story has some British touches and a slightly arch tone that add a lovely fairy-tale flavor to it. When Horace makes a cookie in the shape of a bear, he can't wait to eat it, but then it is dinner time, then he has brushed his teeth, and there is nothing to do but put his gingerbread bear in a tin for safekeeping on his pillow. When Ginger Bear wakes up, there is no one to play with so he decides to bake himself some friends. He makes enough fabulously iced and decorated cookie bears to have a circus, one so thrilling that no one notices the approach of Bongo the dog. While the cookie carnage that follows might rattle a few tender souls, others will beg for a rereading of the crumbled cookie spread, and all will be satisfied by Ginger Bear's clever and considerably safer new career in a bake-shop display window. Wonderful art that matches the text in its ability to be comfortingly familiar and perverse at the same time pleases with a great many witty details and an appealingly varied layout. The nearly psychedelic illustration of Ginger Bear squeezing pink icing over rapturous cookies as the backdrop shimmers with sprinkles is a treat in itself. This is a tasty choice for fans of Traction Man Is Here! (Knopf, 2005) as well as anyone who's enjoyed the various retellings of "The Gingerbread Boy."—Susan Moorhead, New Rochelle Public Library, NY
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