Laura Gia WestCritiques

Does anything inspire holiday feelings more than the smell of fresh baking cookies? The Gingerbread House is a classic retelling of the Gingerbread Man fairy tale, with a holiday twist. The twist is that you can catch this cookie by building him a house, and maybe car.

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  Gingerbread building is a favorite tradition with my son, even into his teens. He would have loved this book when he was younger. I can just imagine him insisting on reading it before we started our creations.
  
  The rhyming text is great for those little ones that want to hear the story "Just one more time." The multi-media art is simple and iconic, the perfect way to start off the holiday season. I foresee this book becoming a tradition of its own in many homes.
  

This gingerbread man is hard to catch in a fun read, which leaves the reader smiling.

The gingerbread man is not a calm character. He dances and taps and does the jig all over the house, refusing to be caught by anyone. But there's one trick, which is sure to make this guy stop is constant movement and play. These pages reveal exactly how to do this...and find more.

This book wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but it was still cute. The main character comes from the popular nursery rhyme about the running gingerbread man, who can't be caught. This one loves to dance, too, and pops all over the house, which has been decorated for the holidays. It definitely fits the Christmas season and awakes the desire to nibble into a fresh gingerbread man. There's life throughout the book, keeping the pacing high until the end. It does take an unexpected twist about half-way through, which switches into a surprise.

The rhymes fit the intended age group pretty well...although some terms won't be known to them. It works best as a read-aloud. The adventure is fun to follow, although stretched on a bit longer than I expected. While most of the illustrations are pretty, vibrant and enjoyable, a couple were obviously plopped and pasted together.

Still, the tale is fun and refreshing with more than a little life and excitement. Plus, it's a great way to get kids to want to try to create a gingerbread house of their own.

I received a complimentary copy.

An adorable and amusing rhyming story about a freshly baked, dancing, prancing, gingerbread man.
This book grabs your attention even before you have opened it. The front cover illustration is eye-catching and lively. All the illustrated characters throughout are also very cute.
This book is easy to read and exceptionally fun for for both children and adults alike.
This is definitely one of those feel good children's christmasy books that could be read all year around.

This book baffled me. I was excited to get it based on the premise that Tina Crocker is a teen performing at a talent show when she is suddenly killed and ends up in Dead School. She is put in the guide division as an assistant to another person. This has never happened before. They have to guide and help change the life of another person. They classify this girl as a loser.

I started and stopped this book so many times. I very seldom abandon a book. I decided to sit and read it until I was finished. The main character gave me mixed feelings. She has such a self-loathing attitude it was hard to like her. I was pleased when she decided to perform at the talent show. I felt like maybe her attitude would change. When she is killed and lands back in Dead School she is the same person. In many ways she was like Melinda, the girl to whom she was an assistant. Both of them came across as bullies. The bouncing back and forth between the different “classes” was unique and well written. I really thought that the ending was headed in the right direction. It was satisfying. Then the ending is ripped from your grasp and an alternate is thrown in and the story ends.
I wish I could say what it was that really made me not love this book. For some reason I didn’t click with it the way I hoped I would. It wasn’t terrible once I got it started, it just wasn’t my favorite.

I did not like this book at all. It pained me to read the entire book in order to review it. It reads like a poor mishmash of the TV show Dead Like Me, where a young woman dies in a bizarre accident and has to work a crappy job in the afterlife, and the movie Beetlejuice, where smug staff and mountains of red tape make the afterlife a nightmare. The book is imbalanced. It’s page after page of Tina Crocker’s misery with nothing to lighten it up. Not even the breezy writing style of the author makes it palatable. The book contains many words that have been misused, which at first was mildly annoying and by the end was making me crazy. Finally, in the last chapter, there is an injection of faith in a higher power that comes out of nowhere.
It pains me to trash a book, especially someone’s first novel. My hope is that other readers will find it enjoyable and give it higher marks.½

It is Valentine's Day at John Hopkin's High, and the disgruntled Tina Crocker is having the best day of her life as she performs at the school's largest talent show. She kills it. Literally. The moment she steps off stage: Tina Crocker croaks and ends up in... Dead School.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a quick, easy read.