The Baker's Dozen - Softcover

Forest, Heather

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1939160707 ISBN 13: 9781939160706

Publisher: August House, 2013

Synopsis

A greedy baker learns a lesson about cutting corners.

The baker, Van Amsterdam is known in Colonial America for baking his St. Nicholas cookies; however, his greed drives him to become stingy in his business, selling people short of quality cookies. Until one day, when a strange, old woman buys a dozen cookies from him.

She expects to receive 13, but the baker withholds the last one. Unbeknownst to the baker, the woman curses the baker, and his business goes downhill. The woman returns for another dozen cookies, but this time he gives her an extra measure. This is the story behind a "baker's dozen," and the custom of offering 13 items instead of the usual 12, spreads throughout the colonies. The baker learns that his customers respect him more for his kindness, not his wealth.

This holiday story is the perfect companion to a day of cookie making and Christmas lessons about giving and humbleness. In addition, readers will learn the importance of fairness, trustworthiness and selflessness.

About this title

About the Author:

Heather Forest, PH.D., is an award-winning author and recording artist a professional storyteller and an educator, whose unique minstrel style of storytelling blends original music, folk guitar, and the sung and spoken word. She brings classic tales from the treasury of world folklore to life with elegance, wit, and the poet's touch. She has been featured at storytelling festivals, theaters and conferences both nationally and internationally.

Susan Gaber has illustrated more than twenty books for children. She and Heather Forest both live in Huntington, New York. Friends for more than twenty-five years, they have collaborated on four picture books, including The Little Red Hen and Stone Soup, which holds a Parents' Choice Award and was included on the Bank Street College's list of Best Children's Books of the Year.

From School Library Journal:

Kindergarten-Grade 4-- Because the term "baker's dozen" may be unfamiliar to most children, this folk tale will need some introduction. In colonial New York there lived a baker whose special St. Nicholas cookies brought him fame and fortune until he refused to give an old woman 13 cookies for the price of a dozen, and his greed almost destroys his business. A year later the woman returns, and he honors her request. His business is restored, and the custom of the "baker's dozen" began. Forest has retold the tale in the same smooth, appealing cadence that she uses in her live performances, with each comma and phrase carefully placed to create a musical whole. Several major changes in detail do not detract from the story. (One version of the original can be found in Cothran's With a Wig, with a Wag David McKay, 1968; o.p..) Gaber has covered each page with a white-bordered watercolor/pencil illustration in muted colors that draw readers' eyes toward the old woman's great lavender-flowered black cape and the red icing on the baker's cookies. Many pages feature attractive wide borders filled with items mentioned in the story that sometimes flow beneath the adjacent illustration and become a part of it. --Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: August House
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1939160707
• ISBN 13: 9781939160706
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Gaber Susan