What is the moral of The Gingerbread Man?

What that actually means

Every boast the gingerbread man makes is completely true. He really can outrun all of them, and he does. The story is not punishing him for being wrong about his own abilities. It is showing that his abilities were never going to be the thing that mattered. The fox does not chase him, argue with him or try to prove him wrong. He waits by the one obstacle the gingerbread man cannot solve, and offers help. That is a far more useful thing for a child to notice than a lesson about pride.

What happens in the story

A little old woman bakes a gingerbread man and forgets about the time. He sits up, gets out through a propped-open door, and outruns everybody who chases him: the old woman, the old man, a cow, a horse and a barn full of threshers. Then he reaches a river, and a fox who has been sitting quite still offers him a lift.

Questions to ask afterwards

The lesson lands better when a child works it out themselves.

1. Was the gingerbread man boasting, or was he just telling the truth?
2. Why does the fox sit still instead of chasing him like everybody else?
3. The fox asks him to move three times. When should the gingerbread man have got suspicious?
4. Everybody joins the chase, even the threshers who do not know what is happening. Why do you think people do that?
5. If you had been the gingerbread man at the river, what would you have done?