I first fell in love with the illustrations of Jan Brett when I stumbled upon her book Annie and the Wild Animals. I thought it was so clever that in the borders of each picture Jan had painted what was happening with the kitten and also what animals one might expect to see on the next page. In a sense, the illustrations are not only exquisite and beautifully detailed, but are a story in and of themselves. In fact, many of the illustrations are so lovely that I’ve been tempted to take them right out of the books and frame them! Yes, they are that great!

As a child, Jan Brett decided to be an illustrator and spent many hours reading and drawing. She says, “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.”

I believe that Jan has accomplished her goal of transporting a reader to those places, whether real or imagined. Some of our favorites are “Annie and the Wild Animals,” “Berlioz the Bear,” “Gingerbread Baby,” “The Mitten,” “Comet’s Nine Lives,” and “The Umbrella.” We can’t wait to see her new book this coming September 2007, “The Three Snow Bears.” Visit Jan Brett’s website for activities, coloring pages, book information, and more.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 9:08 am and is filed under Media (Books, TV, Videos, Music), Mommy Must Haves, Product Reviews, Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.