The Book Thief By Jan Brett

Jan Brett is an impressive children’s book illustrator and author, shown in the popularity of her book’s among children and early childhood professionals alike. By taking her real life travel experiences and drawing them to life in her books, she creates a world far from our own that feels real enough to reach out and touch. In her many years creating these books, she has brought thoughtful stories from all over the world told through animals and humans that truly delight children and touch the professionals that get to share them.
Jan Brett was born in Hingham, Massachusetts on December 1, 1949. As a child, she decided she wanted to be an illustrator and spent most of her time reading and drawing. Pursuing her dream, she studied at the
Boston Museum School where she spent many hours in museums and learned to appreciate the details in the art, from the grand sculptures to the intricate details on porcelain. With her husband at her side, Brett loves to travel and finds the majority of her inspiration from it. Brett knew she wanted to illustrate children’s books as early as kindergarten. "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,” Brett explains on the in influence in her childhood and the work she creates now (“About Jan Brett”). After viewing Stephen Krensky’s Woodland Crossings in 1978, Brett finally decided to pursue her childhood dream and published her first book, Fritz and the Beautiful Horses, in 1981 and Brett has been writing and illustrating ever since.
To form her beautiful style of art, Brett sketches the images first with pencil and uses watercolor with a small brush to attend to the details in her images. Brett says her talent comes from drawing since she was six years old but also says, like anything you become good at, practice is key. Her style not only comes from her drawings but from the way she organizes the events in her books. In the majority of her books, she uses foreshadowing by supplying small illustrations and hints as to what is going to happen on the next page. In The Mitten, Brett foreshadows what will happen on the next page with a sort of window, shaped like a mitten, revealing what animal will show up to crawl into the mitten next. Her love for travel greatly influences her work where she studies the landscapes and costumes for the characters in her work, trying to bring different cultural worlds to life. The Mitten is a Ukrainian folk tale and Brett brings not only the animals, that look soft enough to reach out and touch, but the culture to life, illustrating very detailed costumes for Nicki and his Grandmother, or as Nicki refers to her as Baba, a Ukrainian name for a Grandmother. It seems that Brett’s book are popular for more than just one reason but the realism in her images has to be one of the major ones.
By using images supported by real life, Brett’s books transport you to a world very different from our own. In the book, The Mitten not only do the animals appear to be as fluffy and furry as their real life counterparts, but the illustration of the frosty snow make you feel the cold the animals feel when searching for a warm home. The intricate details used to bring this Ukrainian culture to life really shows Brett dedication to accuracy and commitment to illustrating a story as one might actually see off the page. To a reader, this is very appealing, especially as a child, because children feel like the story is real because of the detail in the art and they can immerse themselves in the world of the book. Professionals who admire her work and provide it for children, see the ability for children to learn about other cultures by not only having to read the words, but by viewing the images and considering what that culture in the book is made up of because truly none of her settings are exactly the same. Personally, I love Jan Brett’s realism in her books and the fact that they’re not simply drawn cartoons that fall flat compared to real life. I believe that her illustrations make her books what they are and attract the reader immediately from just viewing the front
cover. Jan Brett is a revolutionary author and illustrator who is truly dedicated to her work. Her passion for what she draws shows through in the detail which cannot be stressed enough, because it brings the landscape and the characters in her story to life. By pulling experiences from her life and painting them into reality, her work feels authentic and unique. This indeed makes her books relatable to children and adults alike, and is something I feel we all search for in an inspiring and enjoyable reading experience.