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With
over thirty three million books in print, Jan Brett is one of the nation's
foremost author illustrators of children's books.
Jan
lives in a seacoast town in Massachusetts, close to where she
grew up. During the summer her family moves to a home in the Berkshire Hills
of Massachusetts.
As a child, Jan Brett decided to be an illustrator and spent many hours
reading and drawing. She says, "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." As a student at the Boston Museum School, she spent
hours in the Museum of Fine Arts. "It was overwhelming to see the
room-size landscapes and towering stone sculptures, and then moments later
to refocus on delicately embroidered kimonos and ancient porcelain,"
she says. "I'm delighted and surprised when fragments of these
beautiful images come back to me in my painting."
Travel is also a constant inspiration. Together with her husband,
Joe Hearne, who is a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Jan visits
many different countries where she researches the architecture and
costumes that appear in her work. "From cave paintings to Norwegian
sleighs, to Japanese gardens, I study the traditions of the many
countries I visit and use them as a starting point for my children's
books."
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