Gingerbread for Liberty!: How a German Baker Helped Win the American Revolution by Mara Rockliff (review)

Asked to find a local hero, most youngsters would probably suggest looking in a firehouse, police station, or hospital, not a bakery. Here Rockliff serves up a slim slice of history in which Christopher Ludwick, a German baker known for his tasty gingerbread in colonial Philadelphia, enlists to defend his adopted land and volunteers to infiltrate a camp of Hessian mercenaries and possibly lure them to the cause of American liberty: “‘And you always have enough to eat?’ the soldiers asked. ‘No empty bellies here,’ the baker told them. ‘Not in my America!’” Humor outweighs context within the text, and adult readers-aloud may well need to bone up on background provided in a substantial endnote. Children with some foreknowledge of the Revolution, however, will be entertained by the portrayal of George Washington, King George, and others as riffs on tawny gingerbread (the elegant, crispy Old World variety rather than the rotund Christmas or runaway cookie), outlined in thin bands of white “icing.” While this may not convey the gravitas of a bloody war for independence, it does provide a wonderful excuse to get the gingerbread pans back out for the Fourth of July.