The Gingerbread Baby wants to sing, so Matti bakes him a whole band. A drum, a cello, the lot of it gingerbread, and the two of them haul it down through the snow to the village Christmas festival. It goes beautifully right up until the crowd smells what the orchestra is made of.

What happens next is a proper chase: Matti dusting the instruments with snow so nobody can tell what they are made of, the Gingerbread Baby leading the audience away after him, and a hiding place inside a giant Christmas tree.

Brett paints the Alpine village down to the carved shutters and the icing on every gingerbread figure, and the borders run their own procession of musical gingerbread men alongside each scene. The board edition is the small one, 6.2 by 5.02 inches, thick pages, built to be carried around by whoever has claimed it.

Board book, 32 pages, 6.2 by 5.02 in with a 0.83 in spine. Written and illustrated by Jan Brett. G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2019. ISBN-13 9781984812469. Publisher age guidance: 3 to 5 years.

Her other winter titles are here too: The Snowy Nap, in which Hedgie refuses to sleep through the season, and Jan Brett's Little Library, a four-book board set for a younger listener.