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Jan Brett's popular book
LEFT: Jan Brett, an avid traveler who often finds inspiration on her journeys, will be in our area next week for a book-signing event.
Jan Brett is in the middle of a 14-city book tour that includes a Nov. 10 stop in Fredericksburg. She lives with her husband in Norwell, Mass., but has a daughter here.
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Jan Brett was bird-watching in Namibia when she stumbled across the inspiration for her next children's book: rock dassies.
The furry creatures, which live in stone houses, resemble earless rabbits or badgers.
But what Brett saw in their chubby little faces was a new way to tell the story of "The Three Little Pigs."
An illustrator and author for the last 30 years, Brett travels frequently, and her encounters with local wildlife almost always spark a colorful tale.
Woodland creatures in the Ukraine, honey badgers in Botswana, hens in China, polar bears in the Canadian Arctic and hedgehogs--and even trolls--in Scandinavia star in her more than two dozen children's books.
A PERSONAL LINK TO REGION
She'll talk a little about her adventures, sign books and even give kids a drawing lesson next Tuesday at Jabberwocky Children's Books in Fredericksburg.
Though the city isn't as exotic as some of her destinations--she's headed for Iceland in December for troll research--Brett, 59, said she's thrilled to spend some time downtown.
"It's a beautiful little town," said Brett, whose daughter, a Marine, lives in Stafford.
The stop is the sixth on a 14-city book tour marking the 20th anniversary of Brett's book, "The Mitten." An anniversary edition of the Ukrainian folk tale is now on shelves. It can also be found in the newly released "Jan Brett's Snowy Treasury," which includes three other winter tales.
Brett said she loves to chat with her young fans, and she hopes her drawings inspire other would-be artists.
"I'm hoping their minds are going to be saying, 'I can do that. I can do better than that,'" she said.
'THE PERFECT AUDIENCE'
Brett grew up on Eloise, Beatrix Potter tales and Little Golden Books.
When her kindergarten teacher asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she didn't hesitate: a children's book illustrator.
The oldest of three girls, Brett was steadfast in that pursuit, studying art for two years at junior college and a year at The Museum School in Boston.
Her first jobs included painting pictures on menus and ladies' purses, sketching portraits of people's homes and boats, and creating images for textbooks--"anything I could do that was art," she said.
Her first book, "Fritz and the Beautiful Horses," was published in 1981. Since then, everything from spotted hyenas and speckled guinea hens to tusked warthogs and frosted gingerbread men have graced the pages of Brett's work.
Early on, an author urged her to avoid creating "pretty little books."
"They're literature for children," he told Brett, "not an extended greeting card."
She took the advice to heart, infusing her stories with clever characters who puzzle their way out of sticky situations rather than relying on magic.
One of her trademarks is to supplement the main illustration with drawings around the borders of the pages--pictures that hint at what's going on behind the scenes.
"I like to put a lot of clues about what's going to happen next or things for observant readers," Brett said. "When I was little, I loved books like that."
Sometimes, she'll hide a joke, a tiny animal or a small detail in a drawing, figuring no one will notice. But her young readers often do, she said.
"Kids have to be so sponge-like and so brilliantly bright to learn all they need to learn. They're the perfect audience," Brett said. "They are like fountains of imagination and knowledge."
CHILDREN INSPIRE WORK
Some of her best ideas come from children, Brett said.
For instance, she was working out how best to tell the tale of the African dassies, which, like the three little pigs before them, hide in their houses from a variety of predators.
At a book signing, she asked the children who they thought ought to play the part of the wolf. A lion? A jackal? An eagle?
One little boy insisted on the eagle, who could fly down the dassies' chimney only to find himself covered in soot.
Brett thought about it. In Africa, the eagle that preys on the dassies is, in fact, black. Brett decided her story could be the legend of how it got that way.
"I owe it all to this little boy, and I don't even know his name," said Brett, who said she's still amazed that kids love books in this age of DVDs and video games. "They're fascinated by the image on the page, how it tells a story, and they can follow it. They'll get their little pointer fingers out and follow along.
"Children have time to really look at it, turn the page when they want to turn the page," she said. "I feel like I can communicate with them in a special way."
"The Three Little Dassies" is slated to come out next fall. Before that, in the spring, Brett will release "The Easter Egg."
Brett and her husband, Joe Hearne, live in Norwell, Mass., with ducks and some white-crested Polish chickens, a few of whom had cameos in Brett's 2008 release, "Gingerbread Friends."
While on tour, the couple travels in an RV wrapped in colorful images from her books. Hearne, a bass player in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is her No. 1 sounding board when she's developing a story.
He also takes the travel photographs for her Web site (janbrett.com) and handles most of the typing duties--not, she said, her strong suit.
She prefers to spend time drawing musical bears, adventurous armadillos, clever hedgehogs and other quirky characters--and helping them tell their stories.
"I loved being a child. Now that I'm an adult, I look back at that time of wonder and no cynicism and energy you have, and I'm intrigued by it," she said. "It's a way to put myself back into that discovery mode."
Edie Gross: 540/374-5428
Email: egross@freelancestar.com
Children's author and illustrator Jan Brett will host a book-signing and a Q&A for kids at Jabberwocky Children's Books, 810 Caroline St., from 5 to 7 p.m., on Tuesday, Nov. 10. Here is some of her advice for budding young illustrators. Don't try to draw like someone else. Your style is as unique as your fingerprint. You don't need expensive materials. Some colored pencils and a pad of paper will do. Some "mistakes" aren't really mistakes and can even end up improving your drawing. "Some of my best drawings come because I made a mistake. You solve little problems here and there, and all It takes time to create a piece of art. Brett spends about a year on each book, or as she tells kids, she completes Readers often ask her, "How do you know when "I feel like when I can walk into the page, then it's done. You have kind of an inner voice that tells you that." |
