Favorite Artist Spotlight on: Jan Brett

Once a week on this blog I would like to post about one of my favorite illustration artists. The artist I would definitely choose first would be Jan Brett. She is a well noted children's book illustrator and author (it is amazingly successful when a person can wear both hats!). Not only is she wonderfully creative, she is also a very sweet, kind person who really has a heart for children. Her website (http://www.janbrett.com/) has free coloring  pages for children that are really well drawn, print well, and are just really fun. Her books are very engaging not only because of the storyline, but because of the illustrations. In many of her books, the illustration is not only telling one story, but two (or sometimes even three). This engages the viewer and brings them even deeper into the story. Something else very nice about her stories is that they are often folktales or fairy tales with a new spin, so her stories are familiar yet new at the same time.

I would say that my favorite book is "Comet's Nine Lives" by Jan Brett. This book is still in print (as she has over 36 million books in print currently). In this story, a freedom loving cat named Comet gradually loses his lives one by one, until he learns to find safety and friendship in the company of another cat. Comet loses his lives by eating foxglove, falling of the bicycle of a friendly tourist, falling into strawberry milkshake, etc. Each time he becomes increasingly discouraged in trying to find a safe place to reside, until upon his last life, he is washed up onto shore by a hurricane, where a loving calico kitty nurses him back to health at the lighthouse, and they live together happily ever after. What is wonderful about this book is that the tourists on Nantucket Island are all various breeds of dogs. Throughout the illustrations, you can see the story of the calico cat that lives in the lighthouse unfolding in pictures only.

Jan Brett's illustrations are extremely detailed and realistic, but with a story book "touch" that I really can't describe. I've heard Jan Brett say that it takes her "an hour to paint an inch". It's her attention to detail that really brings the spark to her stories.

Check out Comet's Nine Lives and you won't be disappointed.