Jan Brett’s Blog

Happy January,

The book that I’m working on now, MOSSY, is almost finished.  I have a few more double-page spreads to go.  I’m glad I have a deadline, as I’m forced to make decisions about my artwork and to dedicate all my time to finishing my book.  It is always a little sad to finish a book, and be done with all the characters, settings and “extras” that I’ve been painting all year.  I still feel that an Eastern Box turtle shell is a thing of beauty, and I’ve enjoyed painting it.  I’m intrigued with the miniature beauty of moss forests and they too have been a challenge to paint.  In MOSSY, because it is set mostly in an old-fashioned natural history museum, I decided to put various collections; butterflies, beetles, shells, and mushrooms, in the borders.  All my life, I have collected books on these kinds of collections, and especially the art work that showed them in the old days.  I had the most fun painting the butterflies and moths, but I had a much harder time painting minerals and gems.  One of the fun aspects of setting my book in 1913 almost 100 years ago, was dressing the characters in Edwardian fashions.  When I was growing up my mother kept boxes of old-fashioned clothes that we were allowed to go through and play with on special occasions.  I remember a top hat made of beaver that was silky and shiny, as well as ball gowns and beaded lace and fringed shawls.  My grandmother Brett had a lady’s dress shop and she dressed in a formal way that wasn’t that far from the Edwardian fashions the people in my book wear.
As always, during the more focused efforts at the end of my book the characters become more fixed in my mind.  This makes them very hard to leave behind.
This month, I’ll be showing my chickens at the Northeastern Poultry Congress, January 13 and 14th.  I’ll be taking lots of photos of poultry for next year’s book ? a “poultry” Cinderella.  The book doesn’t have a name yet, but it will be set in St. Petersburg.  It will have a large cast of poultry, dressed in opulent Russian finery from the days of Catherine the Great.  I will set my story in winter, but we will go to St. Petersburg in June to get ideas.   I will use my imagination to add snow!
If you live in New England and would like to see 2,500 exhibition poultry, make a stop at the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield.  It is free, and lots of fun.  If you are looking for laying hens or examples of exotic breeds, there are birds for sale.
In my work, I have more than one story I’m working on.  There is a retelling of THE TURNIP, a rural folktale that I will also set in Russia.  We have a trip to the Russian countryside scheduled in June to get ideas and an overnight stay in a Russian Dacha ? or country house that I hope will be fruitful.  We will also stop in Sweden and look at the beautiful farms there, as well as a stop at artist Carl Larsson’s  house.
Artistically, I’ve gotten a little more layered in my painting.  I like painting one translucent watercolor layer over another with a goal in mind of reflectivity and depth.  The borders have given me a chance to play with different groups of colors too.  I like how the natural beiges and browns of shells, feathers, and mushrooms for example, contrast with splashes of red, purple and yellow in the more showy specimens in the collection.  Usually I travel to get ideas for the settings of my books, but in MOSSY I used my backyard and the Agassiz and Peabody Museums at Harvard in nearby Cambridge Massachusetts.  The building that is the museum in my book is my old nursery school, Wilder Memorial in the neighboring town of Hingham.  The most important part of my story, the turtle MOSSY, hasn’t appeared in our yard though.  The turtle pond we built is for aquatic turtles, not terrestrial (ground living) turtles like the Eastern Box turtle like Mossy.  Lots of frogs have moved in and I’m hoping for possible painted turtle sightings next spring.  Two of my friends have pet Box Turtles and the Boyce family sent me some lovely photos of their turtle, Amelia.
Happy writing drawing and exploring nature,

Your friend,

Jan Brett

Crossroads of America Poultry Show

Happy December,

My husband Joe and I are just back from the crossroads of America poultry show, where I exhibited twenty two of my white crested black Polish bantams.  There were over 10,000 poultry exhibited, from 30 states.  I’ve been raising chickens for 12 years.  I began with feed store chicks that I wanted to grow up tame enough for me to use as models for a children’s book I was illustrating called HEDGIE’S SURPRISE.  I modified the looks of my silverlaced Wyandotte hens when painting them to create a character for my story. They became tame enough to stand on my art table.  Painting them was far more difficult than I imagined!  After I went to my first poultry shows, I acquired Silkies and soon afterwards a trio of white crested black Polish bantams.   One of the Polish cockrels has a role in GINGERBREAD FRIENDS and later a buff Cochin pullet became the model for the team pulling the Easter bunny’s coach in THE EASTER EGG.

I’m just finishing up on my turtle book for the fall of 2012, and I’m planning a poultry Cinderella book for 2013.  I jump-started my imagination with a trip to the crossroads show.  Here are my reflections:

I’ve never been to a poultry show where on cooping in, someone hasn’t asked if they could help me. Mix that spirit in with the thousands of hours setting up breeding pens, hatching baby chicks, selecting and growing youngsters, and washing and preparing that every exhibitor logs, and then add the sheer beauty and majesty of hundreds of breed varieties of poultry at the top of their form and vigor and you have a start to what a poultry show is about. And, an electric current runs beneath it all, making a spectacular display into a stomach churning mega event.The birds are judged. Each and every chicken, duck, goose and turkey will be graded, it’s wings spread, it’s confirmation assessed, it’s breeds characteristics weighed and it’s vigor acknowledged. A poultry show is part celebration, part drama, part exhilaration and part whoop it up fun.

The Crossroads show, being a joint ABA and APA national virtually guarantees that the best breeders in the country will bring their best birds (with the exception of the judges’ birds which they cannot show if they are judging) . It insures that as you walk through the aisles of the show halls, you are seeing the top of the quality pyramid, the best examples of each breed and variety. You will see breeds and varieties that are so rare that you stop and wonder, “What is that?”  It makes a show of this magnitude, genetically speaking, an historic occasion.

At every show I have a ritual that never fails to please me as I think back on the show after it’s over. I clear my mind and walk through the aisles  with no agenda, just looking at every bird with focus. It’s strange how one bird will loom large. At that moment, he or she just shines. Once it was a effervescent white leghorn cockerel, another time an elegant grey Japanese cockerel, another time a standard white Cochin pullet so commanding that it drew me in like I was a fish in a line. At the last Crossroads in 2007 the special bird was a lemon blue old English cockerel. He had an unearthly beauty - each feather sculpted, the combination of breast, saddle, hackles and sickles explosively gorgeous. This year it was one of my competitors birds in the white crested Polish bantam class, a cockerel that was so eye capturing and fine that his elegant image still comes back to me when I ‘m running or trying to fall asleep. What is this spark or charisma that radiates from certain birds?  It goes beyond the instinctive behavior that birds show in courtship displays. There is a communication between bird and human that jumps the normal paths, and why it makes a big show like the crossroads seem like a treasure hunt.

I had an experience at a show when a flighty duck of mine got loose and flew crazily into the windows, thankfully missing the huge wide open door to the show hall. It flew to ground and zigged between rows in a panic. I had just about given up on ever bringing that guy home when one of our judges appeared, magically picking it up . He brought it to me as if it were “business as usual”. There was something transmitted in the judge’s hands that made me curious. How could he have first commanded my duck to give up , and then calmed him? I don’t think this ability of a great poultryman can be described, but I think it can be emulated, just like if you see a graceful runner, you feel by just observing, a little can rub off on you. I like to take a little time at a big show like this to watch and try to put into my muscle memory the way great judges and breeders handle the birds. There does seem to be moments where it seems like you can emotionally communicate with poultry by touch.

A visit to The Crossroads isn’t complete for me without a visit to the turkeys.  Maybe it’s because I can’t have turkeys myself, but I love to hear them call, and especially admire their fanned tails as they “bestow their magnificence”. Wild turkeys are very prevalent in new England where we live, and it never gets old surprising a hen with poults or a flock of jakes in the woods. To see all the stunning domestic varieties close up is a marvel, especially considering the selective breeding it took to create them.

Tearing oneself away from ones own birds and their emanate success or failure is difficult, but I usually know one or two juniors who have bought birds from me, and being a spectator at the junior show is fascinating. I see their progress as well as the “future of the fancy”. I remember being a kid and yearning for the chance to own a creature that I could nurture and believe in. It’s poignant to see the junior exhibitors realizing how steep the learning curve is. I feel even more poignant when I know I’m still trying to crack the code myself! I remember the production red chickens my sister and I bought for 35 cents from the local dairy farm, and how we trained them to ride on the handlebars of our bikes. We thought they were the most beautiful chickens in the world. There is always a little heartbreak on that road to show super grand champion.

As I walk away from a big show like the crossroads, I carry with me two strong emotions. The first is pride for my birds. They weren’t elevated to championship row this time, but they looked healthy and beautiful.  The second is gratitude for the traditions in the fancy, for respecting the master breeders and exhibitors who breed the stock we show sometimes for generations, and the judges that try so hard to amass their knowledge and hone their eye to evaluate our poultry so we can raise the bar another year.

Bye for now, your friend,

Jan Brett

Happy November,

This is Jan Brett.  I’d like to tell you about my creative life in hopes that you will be inspired to write and illustrate stories of your own.
My books correspond to the calendar year, although I am always puzzling together future book ideas, and in the fall, my publisher sends me on a book tour.  My husband and I travel across the country on a huge bus, the largest that is allowed on US highways — why so big?  We bring Hedgie along with us, our rather large hedgehog character.  He helps me welcome kids and their parents and teachers to my book signings.  The bus also has room for my 2011 collectible buttons picturing Rollo troll and his moose friend.  I give them out to everyone who comes to my signings, I also give away posters and my news notes — full-color letters I write to children about my latest book, HOME FOR CHRISTMAS.  I also bring aboard my easel, paper and markers so I can give a drawing lesson before my signing.  It is open to everyone, and it’s not just for young artists, but young writers too.  I like to explain to children how I got the idea for my book and all the fascinating places I went to in order to make the setting of my book authentic.  In this case the country I went to was Sweden.  Not only did I visit a place where Norse legends feature trolls, but where moose, reindeer, bear, otter, and lynx abound.  Especially moose, who feature in my book, along with Rollo the troll.  There is even room for a giant antler my friend Elof found in Kiruna, Sweden near the Arctic Circle.  Our bus will travel to  25 towns and cities, and I’m looking forward to speaking to all the children and their parents, teachers, and librarians who will be at my signings.  I’m also looking forward to having lunch with the Lunch on the Bus contest winner and her three friends.
While I’m on the book trail, I will miss my chickens and ducks back home.  I am hard at work on my book about a turtle who grows a garden on her back, but I’m also gathering photographs of chicken breeds to give me ideas for my chicken Cinderella book.  We have a trip scheduled to St. Petersburg Russia where I am planning to set my book, although I’ll be plumbing my imagination for the right “half for real” and “half for fantasy” world I want to create my poultry fairy tale.
MOSSY still has a lot of pages in it to complete, but I’m starting to feel like she is a real character.  When I look in the water of our turtle pond I used for the book’s setting, I really appreciate the intricacies of the changing flora and fauna around our pond as the seasons change.  Mossy is an Eastern box turtle, a terrestrial species that occasionally takes a swim in the pond.  I’ve seen bullfrogs and green frogs in the pond and lots of tadpoles.  There have been lots of dragonflies and butterflies too.  A friend of mine released a spotted turtle in the pond but I haven’t seen it.  It was crossing a street and he helped it into the woods away from traffic.  Turtles are dwindling in Southeastern Massachusetts where I live and some species are endangered or threatened.  Unless a turtle is going to be run over, it’s best to leave it alone because their travels take them from one habitat to another, and we humans shouldn’t disrupt their travels.  I’m concentrating on making a good environment for turtles, and I hope they will visit my pond.  Our pond is pretty deep, it extends below the frost line, has built-in caves and basking rocks.  Last spring we added a large area of loose, loamy sand that we hope is good for nesting, and my friend Scott planted wild strawberries all around.  We have miles of perfect turtle habitat behind our house, unfortunately it’s also the home of the deer tick that carries Lyme disease a pest that is very active during early spring when it is interesting to look for wildlife in the vernal ponds.
Illustrating children’s books is always an adventure that leads you into unexplored paths.  I hope you will give it a try, you may not be exploring turtle ponds or poultry yards but you probably will be exploring something equally fascinating.  Good luck with your creative project!
Your friend,
Jan Brett

Mossy Dummy Pages 17 - 18

Happy October,

This is Jan Brett, and I’d like to say a few words about what’s going on in my life as a children’s author and illustrator.
I have about a month to work on my new book, MOSSY before going out on the book tour, and I’m looking forward to a stretch of time where I can devote a lot of time to it. When I’m working on the finishes, I’ll continue doing a little research on the side, but it’s mostly putting slot of hours in painting. I created a fairly elaborate book dummy this time. If you could see it, it’s loose cartoon like drawings done with rapidiograph ( a kind of mechanical ink pen) and watercolors on typing paper. It’s a about 1/2 the size the final pages will be, but in the same proportions as the published book. Tomorrow I’ll bring the first 17 pages to NY city to show to my editor, the art director and designer. It’s always disconcerting because there are already things I plan to improve, but I’m possessive about my work. This is probably because the best work comes from way back in my sub-conscience, and when a lot of people add their opinions it’s hard to hear my own voice. This is not to say that sometimes others are right. The publisher works far ahead of the publishing date, and they present a brief visual version to book buyers early on. That means I do a few pages in the beginning of the story, some in the middle and several at the end. It’s not the ideal way to work, but if I had completed more of the book earlier it would be different.I love wild flowers , and since Mossy takes place in the spring I’ve been sticking to the wild flowers the bloom at that time. But one of the last pages pictures Mossy, her mate Scute, and their little babies and I realized I could time it anytime that turtles are not in hibernation. I’ve been gathering the flowers that grow in early October including one of my favorites new England purple aster, and goldenrod. I was surprised to see their are over 25 varieties of goldenrod.  I may be asked to work on the jacket next, but after that I’ll be working on the pages showing people in their 1913 time period clothes, which should be fun, since I m interested in costume.

                       

Norwell Turtle Pond

Once a child asked me what the hardest part of my job is. One of the hardest parts is not having more time to work on my books ideas!  I have three book ideas in the back of my mind work to work on when I’m driving in the car, running, or when I’m getting ready to fall asleep.  They are almost like the big jigsaw puzzle people set up on the table, to be worked on in spurts.  You might find that keeping a mental notebook about a creative project a good way to make use of all your creative energy, with pieces ready when you sit down with a couple of hours of solitude.
Good luck and happy reading,

Jan Brett