What an amusing new take on an old fairy tale.
This was cute and funny and I can't wait to get a copy in my nephews hands!
The illustrations had an innocence to them that I found pleasing.
Thank you NetGalley and Arcturus Publishing for my DRC.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is the second book in the twisted fairy tales re-tellings series by Stewart Ross and again I absolutely loved it.
This book gave me giggles throughout and I know my daughter will love it too. I can't wait to read more books in this delightfully entertaining series.

I am a huge fan of twisted fairytales and I love the spin this one takes using Ninjas and their skills.
A Ninja couple long for a Ninja child to share their skills with. The crafty fox gives advice and ingredients to them but not quantities so their Ninjabread Man is a bit more of everything...speedier, sneakier and braver than they intended.
Still hosting the same cast of characters, albeit in ninja form, the story sticks to the same path of trying to catch the Ninjabread Man. Horse, Cow, Dog are called in to use their skills.
Everyone gathers in the chase and of course the fox has the most opportune moment to eat the biscuit but due to the ingredients, this is not a pleasant taste.
This would make an excellent accompaniment to a fairytale unit in school or perfect for children wanting something different from the originals.

Funny, excellent illustrations and twisted- what more can you want?

I'm not pulling punches anymore. Life is too short for bad books, and there's really no excuse for the nonsense that I'm seeing in some picture books these days. I would not give my child (or anyone else's) a book that's full of grammar issues. This book started out badly with the impossible speech tags in the second paragraph. Yes, the second paragraph. Frustrated, I kept reading, only to be hit with more and more nonsense. The characters literally smiled, grinned, nodded, and snorted their speech throughout. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: a silent or non-verbal action is not a dialogue tag! So, for each instance, I knocked off a star for the writing portion of my rating. There were eight instances. I'll be generous and ignore the fact that I should be dealing with negative stars here...

The story itself seems way too long, even though the book is only 32 pages. It starts with a couple of retired ninjas who want a child to carry on their work (always a great reason to have offspring). So these selfish people go to Crafty Fox (inexplicably, there are human-sized anthropomorphized animals living in the same world) and he tells them to bake themselves a kid using lemon, ginger, and wasabi. But they don't really listen, add way too much of each ingredient, and end up with a gingerbread brat who proceeds to destroy everything in his path. After each of the other animals fails to capture the Ninjabread Man, Crafty Fox tries to eat him... only to be thwarted by the amount of wasabi. The baked good runs away, never to be seen again.

There really isn't much to this particular story, and I don't really see the point of setting it in Japan. It makes for a weird mix of story themes. The writing is bland and uninteresting (although the author seems to have tried to jazz it up by avoiding the word "said" as much as possible). The illustrations may be the best part of this... but even that managed to get messed up, as this is one of those picture books that doesn't credit the illustrator on the cover (I hate that).

I like fractured fairy tales, but I don't like this. I'd only recommend this to readers who don't care at all how the English language is used (or abused).

I love this! I can already hear my students laughing with this story. When I worked as a kindergarten teacher, we always did Gingerbread stories the last week in December. This book would be PERFECT for that. I currently work as an ESL teacher and can see the multiple ways I could use this with the multiple grades I teach. It’s got such a great story with many laughable moments. Basically, if you’re an elementary teacher, this book would be perfect for your classroom collection.