Beautiful Gift Chest for a Young Family at Christmas Illustrated with Janosch's Little Tiger and Little Bear

Do you know Janosch? I didn't until a few years ago when I discovered his beautifully illustrated gentle stories about Little Tiger and Little Bear. And I learned about these delightful children's books from a box of cookies!


Each year Lebkuchen Schmidt in Nuremberg Germany designs new Chests and Tins for their Collection of traditional German Christmas cookies and pastries. And each year for some time now they have partnered with the famous German children's book author Janosch to create a Chest adorned with his charming drawings of two friends named Little Tiger and Little Bear and their toy Tigerente - a little wooden toy duck on wheels with black and yellow stripes. Literal translation: Tiger Duck!

Janosch is the pen name of Horst Eckert - you can read all about him in his Wikipedia page but much more interesting - especially for the young ones - check out his German-language website with stories and activities at Janosch.de (it's all in German but with a little help from Google's auto translate function one can easily navigate it!). Janosch turned 85 this past year and the Deutsche Welle Online news magazine wrote a great article about the fascinating man.

Janosch Chest 2016

This year's Lebkuchen Schmidt Janosch Chest is a striking red with a playful scene of Little Tiger and Little Bear and their friends filming a movie together. The movie appears to be about pirates and lost treasure and the friends seem to be having a lot of fun with the set and costumes. My favorite part of the scene is the figure up on the ladder creating rain on the set using a watering can!


And that's only the outside of the Chest that we've been exploring! Inside the Chest are five of Lebkuchen Schmidt's yummy pastries:

• Milk Chocolate coated Premium Elisen-Lebkuchen cookies with decoraitve white icing
• Premium Elisen-Lebkuchen bars - some glazed and some chocolate
• The Fairytale House - the favorite amongst children - filled with chocolate coated Lebkuchen hearts and a fairytale
• Spicy Speculatius Biscuits - the only problem with this is that there is only one box and kids seem to be able to eat the whole thing in one sitting!
• Milk Chocolate Fruit Cookies - one of my personal favorites - soft gingerbread, milk chocolate glaze and sweet jam on the inside

And if you are a collector, the Janosch Chest is a wonderful collection to start. Past years Chests have featured the Janosch characters playing make-believe in the backyard and the friends in a whimsical dream-world.

Once the cookies and pastries are eaten the Chests may be used for all sorts of things like:

• Re-gifting to other young families or to children filled with toys, books and small gifts
• Storing small collections - like Barbie clothes or die-cast toy cars
• Collecting special cards and letters that a child receives throughout her life - a collection that could be presented to her when she is old enough to really appreciate the messages

Gingerbread World imports Lebuchen Schmidt Chests, Tins and Gift Boxes to North America every year. The Janosch Chest is always in our collection but we only bring in a limited number of this special Chest. Buy yours here and we can send it to you or ship it on your behalf to friends and relatives anywhere in the world.

The world would be a better place if we all had friends like Little Tiger and Little Bear...or maybe even just a Tigerente of our own!

Cheers,

Tamara





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