A silly twist on the classic tale. The school principal bakes a gingerbread cookie and brings it to school in his lunchbox. When the principal opens his lunchbox, the gingerbread kid winks and jumps off the desk. Where is he off to in such a hurry?

When the principal puts two candy eyes on his newly-baked gingerbread kid, it come to life and proceeds to wreak havoc in the school, outsmarting the gym coaches, lunch ladies, and teachers.

An old man visits a closed and decaying building which he remembers entering some sixty years earlier as a small, frightened nine-year-old. He then mines those distantmemories for this stark recounting of growing up in a large, military orphanage. He tells of newkie lessons perhaps too well-learned and a kiddie dormitory perhaps too well-ordered; of violent daytime battles and innocent nighttime rendezvous; of a happy-go-lucky garbage man and a not so lucky marksman; of unconsummated first love and an unexpected last message. These memories, and many more, are flanked by two sad goodbyes, one wistful and one anguished, but each demarcating a decisive fork in life's road. Finally, in a dramatic epilogue, former classmates return for the annual orphan's reunion and gather in an off-campus bar to revel and reminisce.

Picky eater Nicky declares that she would rather eat bees and parrots than peas and carrots until her inventive family devises a clever plan to overcome her finicky habits.

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E. R. Frank’s seminal first novel weaves together the stories of eleven teenagers in one city over seven years in this groundbreaking and “impressive debut” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Why does Gingerbread always have a smile on his face? “Because life is funny,” he tells Keisha. But for her—and almost everyone else in her Brooklyn neighborhood—there doesn’t seem to be much to laugh about. China, Ebony, and Grace are best friends, but Grace’s mother isn’t crazy about her being friends with two girls who aren’t white, and each cut Ebony makes on her wrist seems to drive them even further apart. Just across the schoolyard there’s Eric who has to raise his younger brother Mickey, even though no one expects him to amount to anything. Meanwhile, Sonia’s Muslim parents expect everything of her, and it may be more than she is able to give after she suffers a shattering loss. When Drew brings his father’s Jaguar into Sam’s family’s auto body shop across town they seem to be from opposite sides of the tracks, but Drew’s the one hiding a dark family secret. And he’s not the only one.