Jan Brett
Jan Brett
Jan Brettis an American illustrator and writer of children's picture books. She is known for colorful, detailed depictions of a wide variety of animals and human cultures ranging from Scandinavia to Africa. Her best-known titles include The Mitten, The Hat, and Gingerbread Baby. She has adapted or retold numerous traditional stories such as the Gingerbread Man and Goldilocks and has illustrated some classics such as "The Owl and the Pussycat"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth1 December 1949
CityNorwell, MA
CountryUnited States of America
My grandmother would give me a beautiful book each year. I especially loved the Beatrix Potter books. They were very detailed. And I promised myself that was what I'd do. I also loved the big words she used. I was excited because I knew what they meant from the context. I put a few big words in for just that reason.
One of my favorite books is 'Armadillo Rodeo', and I got the idea from traveling to Texas and seeing armadillos.
Sometimes I get ideas from childhood. In 'The Hat', Hedgie starts getting teased about his hat, and he just pretends that everything is okay. That's the advice that my mother gave me - not to get mad and pretend that everything is okay. And it worked.
I have a hard time writing, and I usually have to put a timer at my desk and put it on for an hour. But I love to illustrate, and I can hardly stop myself.
My optimism has helped me through some hard times. If you try to send out good things, good things come back to you.
Children have such vibrant minds. They need to play. They need to be creative. They need to imagine. It's so important for their sense of self discovery. And it helps them learn problem-solving.
When I was little, I would close my eyes and put my finger on a page. Then in my mind, I would go to that place.
Writing a story is like going down a path in the woods. You follow the path. You don't worry about getting lost. You just go.
A children's book is the perfect place where young readers can understand the world because they can take a deep breath and look at it and imagine and contemplate while they're looking at.
I would like teachers to look deep because sometimes kids do have a faade that they put up because they feel vulnerable. Their creative truth may not be ready for their friends to see.
When I was little, I loved books that gave me lots of detail so that I felt like I could be transported to this other place, or, in the case of an illustration, I felt like I could walk into the page.
I remember the special quiet of rainy days when I felt that I could enter the pages of my beautiful picture books. Now I try to recreate that feeling of believing that the imaginary place I'm drawing really exists. The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope others as well, that such places might be real.
The books take a year just to do the drawing. I will travel to a country to do the research and get ideas. Sometimes I don't travel to do research, but mostly I do. It takes a long time, but do I ever get tired of it? Not really. The characters kind of grow and evolve.
Of all people, children are the ones that really understand when there's a truth there for them - an emotional truth. The characters really have to work. Children, as an audience, are very inspirational for me.