Jan Brett Biography

Jan Brett – American Illustrator & Author 1949-

A book illus­trated by Jan Brett is many things: Vivid, rich, lavish; filled with attention to detail; often humorous. Indeed, each page created by this artist is so lush with colorful objects, large and small, that it tells an entertaining story by itself. Born and raised in Massachusetts, Jan Brett goes to a cabin in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, where she finds inspiration for her children’s books. Using no models, she de­signs her intricate pages from memory, recalling objects from her past and transferring them to paint on paper.

The majority of Jan Brett’s most successful pic­ture books find their subjects in folklore, whether traditional or modern. Those she has written herself are based on established motifs, such as holiday stories, animal stories, or fan­tasy, and often employ a cumulative structure. Brett’s adaptation of the Ukrainian folktale The Mitten (1990) is perhaps the best example of this format. Using an elaborate series of borders, the artist has framed the action detailed in the text with small pictures suggesting both a simulta­neous and a future events a foreshadowing that provides the child observer with a delicious sense of anticipation. Brett played similar artis­tic games in her rendition of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat (1991), where a pair of fish carry on their own courtship in the waves under the pea-green boat.

While always maintaining the same recogniz­able style of illustration, Brett has remained true to each story’s individual traits, such as nation­ality, class, time period, and character. She is known in particular for her illustrations of Scandinavian characters and settings. For her fairy tales She has carefully clothed her subjects in an accurate rendition Of traditional folk Cos­tume, Often including jewelry, braid, embroi­dery, lace, feathers, and other finery when ap­propriate. Dramatic backgrounds filled with tapestries; variegated outdoor landscapes., and complex architectural structures frequently re­flect a specific setting or theme, but fade at mo­ments of high drama in favor of close-ups or sil­houettes.

Jan Brett has met with occasional criticism from those reviewers who embrace a “less is more” ar­tistic philosophy; her illustrations fall under the category of realism, and; indeed, they leave little to the imagination. Brett is seen as less gifted with words than with pictures, and her adaptations of folktales and her illustrations for books by oilier authors are generally considered to be the most successful of her works. Praise for her own writing, however, has been just as frequent as criticism. The Mitten, Brett’s finest book, was named one of Booklists Best Books for the 1980s, and a number of other works have received sim­ilar well-deserved acclaim.

C.C.B

Source: Children’s Books and their Creators, Anita Silvey.

Jan Brett Bibliography