Life is pretty good
for children's author Jan Brett, who was in town recently
to read from her newest work, Gingerbread Baby. She
writes and illustrates beautiful, award-winning books, lives
in a lovely Massachusetts seacoast town just miles from where
she grew up, and gets to travel the world with her husband,
who is in the Boston Symphony. All this and a pet hedgehog,
too?
Willamette Week: Has anyone ever accused you
of having the perfect life?
Jan Brett: Well, I suppose so, but I don't dare say it
because I'm afraid I'll jinx it. To be fair, it took a lot
of time and effort to get to where I am now. When I first
started trying to break into this field, I was a single
parent and I had to do a whole bunch of jobs to support
myself and my daughter. I would paint the names on the back
of people's boats, illustrate menus for restaurants.
It says in your press kit that you decided to be a book
illustrator when you were just a child.
Yes, I was 5 years old. I used to tell my teachers that
I didn't have to learn math because I was going to be an
illustrator. At one point, though, one of my teachers told
me that if I really was going to do it, I would have to
start drawing something other than horses.
Did you write books when you were little?
Oh, yes, all the time...about horses. My friend Marla and
I were obsessed with them, but our families didn't have
the money to buy us real ones. So we created these elaborate
books until the eighth grade. The next phase was books about
girls with long hair who hung around in coffee houses.
How did you meet your husband?
I was taking gliding lessons, and he was my co-pilot. He
actually grew up in Portland, went to Grant High School
and then joined the Boston Symphony when he was just 19
years old.
I noticed in Gingerbread Baby that you changed
the ending of the old folk tale and allowed the main character
to survive. Does the violence of some of these old children's
stories bother you?
Actually, no. I grew up reading the Brothers Grimm, and
I really liked it. I always felt that the darkness was outweighed
by goodness. What does bother me is when you have a children's
story where everything is going wrong, then suddenly everything
is resolved for no apparent reason.
Tell me about your hedgehog.
The hedgehog we have now is called Buffy, short for Buffalo
Gal. She's 4 years old, and she's pretty shy. The one we
had before her was more personable. He was housebroken and
would wander around the studio and nip at our slippers.
Hedgehogs are Old World animals, you know, not native to
this country. I like them because they look very childlike,
with their big, nocturnal eyes, and because they don't have
to run away or fight back as part of their defense--they
can just curl into a prickly ball.
I noticed hedgehogs all through the book.
Yes, I started putting them in, and children started to
notice them, and then it became sort of a Where's Waldo
game where kids would count them and try to find them, so
now I always include them. Kids notice so much more than
adults do when they read a book. They practically walk into
the page. That's why I try to include a lot of detail for
them, like borders and side panels that foreshadow or reveal
what else is happening in the plot.
So you live in a idyllic place, and you create beautiful,
beloved children's books. Do you at least have an annoying
habit we should know about?
Well, it used to be saying "awesome" all the time. You
know, I hang around kids and I guess I picked it up from
them. It was always so satisfying to say it, but then I
realized that it was kind of pathetic--an older person trying
to talk like the kids--so I made myself stop.
Okay, one more probing question: Is that a real sheep
in the background of your publicity photo?
A sheep in the photo? Oh, wait a minute, that's right!
It's funny you caught that. In the original picture, there
was a turkey standing behind me, but he kept turning to
the side and it looked like his head was cut off. So, using
the computer, we took that sheep from another part of the
photo and moved it over to cover up the turkey.
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Willamette Week | originally
published December 1,
1999
|
