Jan Brett’s Blog

MOSSY finished artwork pages 12-13

This is Jan Brett, and this is my July Hedge a Gram, my newsy letter to kids and interested people that I put together so you can have a glimpse into my life as an illustrator, and picture book writer.
Since July is the month where our country celebrates it’s birthday, I would like to make sure to thank all the men and women in the armed services, and their families for their service. My daughter is a Marine, and I know how proud I am of her and her husband for their service. They joke that Marines age in dog years. Behind the joke is the truth that our Marines, Soldiers, Airmen and Sailors work very hard in areas that range from hard to unpleasant to dangerous, and although they rarely complain we have to take that extra step in our thought processes to appreciate what they do. It’s very hard when a spouse or Mom or Dad is deployed, and I put some coloring pages on my website just for you. Color them and e- mail to Mom or Dad so they can admire your art skills.
I am currently working on a picture book called The Story of Mossy. It’s about a turtle that grows a garden on her back, and is taken off to a museum because she is such a marvel. She leaves behind another turtle that misses her and remains faithful while she is making headlines at the museum. A little girl talks the biologist into returning her back to her home and she is reunited with her friend.
I’ve finished the book dummy, the cartoon version of the story- a mock- up of the 32 page book. I started out doing thumbnails” small versions of the pages, but ended up starting over and creating a larger dummy so I could more accurately realize all the nuances in the borders. My editor Margaret encouraged me to work it out at the dummy stage rather than going to the finished artwork too soon. It is always hard to hear that, but I have lot of trust in my editor, and now I’m glad I did. It means I’m way behind schedule.
If you are working on a story, I can tell you it isn’t always a smooth process! The most important thing is to keep a high standard in your head and keep moving. Like a lot of things, just spending all of dedicated time on the project helps.
I’m tremendously enthusiastic about finally reaching the finished artwork stage. I have a new iPhone so I have been taking photos of local wildflowers on my runs. We’re currently living in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, and there is a lot of natural beauty in the Tyringham valley.There is also a cascading brook that runs three miles down our big hill, with lots of mossy, ferny habitat to set Mossy’s home in.  I especially need lots of photos of little waterfalls. Moving water is hard to capture, so I’ll use the photos as my guide.
My book takes place in two locations, Mossy’s home and the natural history museum. On the museum pages I’m putting the museum collections in the borders.  The page I’m working on now is surrounded by rocks, minerals and gems. They are fun and challenging to draw. I first went to the Harvard Museum to see their collection, which is very inspiring. The different forms are out of this world, some like the meteorites quite literally are from out of this world. I will have collections of shells, fossils, beetles, orchids, bird’s eggs, feathers, and arrowheads in the borders.  I’m not including any specimens of animals, although that is always my favorite part of a natural history museum. I will never forget the first time I saw a taxidermist Pangolin. A very unusual and seldom seen animal.  It looks like an anteater with a pinecone hide.
Even though my fall book tour is months away, we are finalizing our stops at stores. I will be signing Home For Christmas. At the Book Expo, the book industry’s big convention, I saw the first bound copies. There is ” foil” on the Jacket, a sparkley material, that I saw for the first time as well. I love the jacket. Now I just have to wait and see if people like mischievous trolls as much as I do. There is a fascination with children that live with animals, Romulus and Remus, Mogli in the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling to name three.  I was always curious and envious.  I tried to talk my parents into letting me sleep in my horses’ stall when I was in 5th grade but they wisely said no. Finally I got to live vicariously through Rollo the troll when he moves in with an owl family, bears, otters, becomes pals with a Lynx and finally a herd of moose. It’s always a bit anxiety provoking to have a book you’ve worked on excitedly be just about released.
One book is finished, but not published yet, it will be in September, another book is being worked on, and a third, the Turnip, is being planned for. We are planning to go to St. Petersburg in early June of next year to look at some Russian farms and rural architecture.
I hope all that summer energy is making you want to work on your writing and art projects. I love to get out and do long distance runs and turn over ideas for books in my mind.  Happy Reading and Creating!

Your Friend, Jan Brett

Sketch for MOSSY 2012 fall

Happy June!

This is Jan Brett, and this is my June hedge a gram.  What I call my hedge a gram is my thoughts about children’s books — especially the one I’m working on.  When I was little I knew I would be a children’s book illustrator.  I wanted to get started right away.  It was difficult to find anyone who knew about how it was done.  Actually, every time I write and illustrate a book I reimagine the process.  Sometimes, I strive to do it differently.  One of the things I find inspiring is how kids think along paths less traveled or better still, bushwhack their own way into a story.  By writing my hedge a gram I hope kids and adults who want to write children’s books will see some of my milestones, my creative excitement and some of the down slides when I have to work through a problem.
I usually begin my book in early February.  The idea has been percolating for a year or more, but this isn’t a rule, it usually happens that way though.  I’ve had an idea about mossy the turtle who grows a garden on her back ever since we saw a snapping turtle underwater covered with water plants, rippling in the current.  The turtle rose slowly from the bottom, under our dangling feet.  We were on our dock on Goose Pond.  I decided to take the turtle character out of the water, turn her into an Eastern Box Turtle and have her be discovered by a biologist who brings her home to be an exhibit in her Museum.  I set my story back in time to late Victorian called the Edwardian period about 1908 — 1915.  I did so because small museums that grew out of people’s collections from the natural world — shells, bird’s nests, orchids, fossils were all the rage.  At the end, the biologist’s little niece makes an argument for setting the turtle free, and together they release Mossy, but not before she is painted in great detail.
One of my favorite places in the world is the Peabody Museum of Art.  Part of it is called the Agassiz Museum, after Mr. Lewis Agassiz a brilliant scientist, explorer, collector and director of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology in the mid-1800s.  Many mounted specimens were taken from remote parts of the world and little is known about them even today, these creatures are so secretive.  When you go to the Museum, one marvels at the diversity of nature.  I hope in my book I can capture a bit of that feeling.
Even though I have big ideas, lots of excitement and energy to devote to my book it has been difficult.  I’ve mostly finished the 32 page dummy and I went over it with my trusted and most admired editor Margaret Frith.  I kept getting the feeling that Mossy didn’t win me over enough, so I decided to insert a double page spread at the beginning showing her growing her garden.  That would make the book 34 pages.  So I took out a page in the middle where I went on a little too long about the pros and cons of Mossy staying as an exhibit in the Museum.
I feel both sides have equal credibility so I found the answer in a compromise.  Mossy stays a year in the Museum, garnering interest and being admired and studied, but then she goes free after a wonderful detailed portrait is done of her.  The portrait is a very useful tool.  The Peabody is filled with wonderful portraits of horses done by Native Americans.  They tell things about the horses that a photo could not.  There are also portraits of Native Americans themselves, and those capture something about the human spirit that a photo does not always capture.
At my meeting with Margaret, we came upon the idea of using the frame as a device to organize my illustrations in the book.  It gives a hint to the turning point of the book, the grand portrait of Mossy.
I use the passage of time in this book like a character.  It starts out when Mossy is a young turtle.  She has a pair bond with Scoot who is waiting for her when the biologist returns her to the wild.  She has baby turtles eventually, and the last page is of Mossy as an old, old turtle.  I was amazed to read about a turtle that had 1887 carved in its shell, but is still walking around on Martha’s Vineyard island.
I hope by reading my ups and downs, problems and solutions, you will see how books get molded and formed.  It’s easy to get discouraged, but the rewards make it worth the trouble.
Good luck on your story and don’t give up on it!  Don’t forget the trick of just before falling asleep, ask yourself, “How can I fix this problem.”  You might have the answer in the morning.  Happy reading,

Your Friend,

Jan Brett

Arctic Sweden from Helicopter near Kiruna, Sweden

Happy May!

This is Jan Brett, and this is my May hedge-gram. Every month I stop my work so I can write about what I’m doing in my life as illustrator and children’s book writer. It gives me a good feeling to think I could talk about my work in a way that would help aspiring illustrators know what it’s really like. My version, anyway.

I am very anxious to begin the finishes for my turtle book, MOSSY. I’ve done thumbnails of the 32 page dummy, and collected a lot of the research material , but several other projects have gotten in the way. For the last week I’ve been working on the news notes or “all about” letter to kids about HOME FOR CHRISTMAS. I reassembled all my books and photos from our trip to Sweden last year with our friends Elof and Gudrun, who are Swedish. Since my book takes place in the Swedish countryside I bought lots of books showing the plants and animals that live there. For one thing Swedish squirrels have long tufts on their ears. Also their bumblebees look like they’ve been dipped in white paint – just the very end of them. There were lots of plants that were new to me, and many birds. I’ve been in quite a few arctic countries – ones that are above the arctic circle, Baffin island, in Canada, Iceland, Norway, and now Sweden. Next Spring I’m planning a trip to Russia, and St. Petersburg must be fairly close to the arctic circle too.

One of the birds I saw in Sweden that I drew in my news notes is the Capercaillie, which is the world’s largest grouse. It lives in wild places that are fairly remote, so it has become a symbol of unspoiled nature. We got up at 3:00 in the morning to be up at sunrise in order to see the male’s courting dance that he performs for the females. It is a gathering called a lek, and the males compete with each other. On our walk into the forest we saw a few females, but the males were not to be found. The Capercaillie also lives in remote parts of Scotland where conservationists have had a tartan, the name for Scottish plaid cloth, created using the colors of the Capercaillie, black, white, brown and blue. The money from the sale of the tartan helps to preserve the habitat.

In Stockholm, Sweden’s best known city there is an open air museum. They have brought historically important houses from all over Sweden, and reassembled them. One building was a log storage barn, quite small. It was standing on 6 trees, that were peeled of their bark, and the spreading roots at their bases were left intact. It looked all the world like the hut on fowl’s ( chicken’s) legs that appears in Russian folk tails. I made sure I added one like it on the troll’s farm.   Skansen is the name of this wonderful park in the heart of the city. I was also able to see all the animal characters in my book, moose, bear, otter, lynx, grey owl, squirrel and bumblebee.  The only character I couldn’t find was a troll. Maybe they saw me but I didn’t see them.

I am very eager to get back to my turtle book. I am taking note of the wild flowers in our yard and in the woods, and when they are blooming so I will have it right when Mossy and Scute, my two turtle characters are shown in their natural habitat. I have yet to see a real live turtle this year, but that’s because I need to spend more time in the woods. When we move up to the Berkshires for the summer in a few weeks I will spend quite a bit of time on the Appalachian trail, and maybe I’ll see some turtles. We have created a turtle pond, and so far only a huge bullfrog has moved in. I’ve been wondering why there hasn’t been any spring peepers in our pond, when we’ve been hearing them out back, but it may be that they don’t want to share the pond with the huge bullfrog! I read that a bullfrog will eat hummingbirds. We are adding a sandy spot next to the pond so female turtles will be attracted to an ideal nesting site. I have heard that turtles like soft fluffy soil that they can dig in, in order to lay their eggs.

I hope story ideas are coming to you fast and furiously, and you are jotting down ideas that you can work into a story. I find it works best to write the story first. Maybe you have written a story, and now are ready to create illustrations. I usually make a 32 page dummy first, at about half the size of the finished book.  Then I can work on the ups and downs of my story. I’m trying to let all the energy of spring energize and motivate me! Good Luck with your creative projects.   Happy Spring,

Your Friend,

Jan Brett

Happy April!