Ginger Bear (review)

Horace would usually just roll cookie dough "over the floor and furniture until it was deep gray and fluffy," but this time, with the help of his mother and a bear-shaped cookie cutter, he creates Ginger Bear. After Horace goes to sleep, prevented by circumstances from eating his new cookie, Ginger Bear awakens and whips up a batch of pastry friends, with whom he puts on a delicious kitchen circus. Unfortunately, the family dog evinces an insalubrious interest in the circus, and Ginger Bear barely escapes with his life; he then realizes that it's a dangerous world for a cookie, and he finds a safe home in a bake-shop display window along with other decorative not-for-eating elements. While closer inspection reveals that the plot has more holes than a lace cookie, the combination of humorous telling (the food circus, narrated in the style of a circus promotion, will be particularly well received), delicious topic, and enticing detail will certainly tempt audience appetites, and modest yet plucky Ginger Bear is an endearing if odd hero. Grey's art, primarily watercolor enhanced with other media (a note assures that "no cookies were harmed in the making of the pictures"), radiates a sturdy cheer that belies its inventiveness: careful shading adds intriguing texture; strong and varied compositions emphasize the focus and structure the pacing; entertaining fanciful details (from a toothbrushing diagram to a sequence of countable toy sheep to an elegantly patterned wallpaper) add dimension. Youngsters will have to weigh the trauma of the dog-savaged cookies against the fairy-tale pleasures of a sparklingly decorated cast of edible friends, but in the end they'll find it hard to resist the eponymous hero. It would just be wrong to serve this up with gingerbread men—but it's tempting.