Kirkus Reviews QR Code
CAN'T CATCH ME, I'M THE GINGERBREAD MAN by Jamie Gilson

CAN'T CATCH ME, I'M THE GINGERBREAD MAN

By

Pub Date: April 13th, 1981
Publisher: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard

As one of 100 finalists, twelve-year-old Mitch McDandel goes off to a national Bakeathon with his own ""health-food"" recipe for gingerbread. Mitch hopes to win first prize of $30,000 to help his parents' ailing health food store Sunshine, and when Sunshine burns down two days before the contest he's all the more determined. In the end, Mitch doesn't win any of the prizes, but he does get to appear on national TV. And, on the way there, he and his father cook up plans to open a health-food take-out business in a more likely location. Gilson wrings only the mildest of satiric humor from the Bakeathon, mostly from a teenage entrant whose mother is pulling her strings. Like Mitch's first appearance in Dial Leroi Rupert, DJ (1979), this is all good-natured but without much kick.