Interviews

Before the live bn.com chat, Jan Brett agreed to answer some of our questions:

Q:  What was it like painting at the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House?

A:  It was a great sense of history to be there, and it makes you feel like you are in touch with children who might not normally be reading children's books. I met a lot of children who had never met an illustrator before. A lot of kids would come by my easel, and they would see me painting on it. It was great for them to see how much time and thought that it takes to draw. I think they could sense how happy I am when I do it. Just like Tom Sawyer painting his fence.

Q:  What type of artistic or literary research did you do for The Hat?

A:  I went to Denmark and spent ten days there. During the ten days, we stayed in a 400-year-old inn with a thatched roof and a lot of the animals that appear in the book. We stayed on the island of Fuenan, the middle island of Denmark. The light was also beautiful. I didn't use any black in the book -- all the dark colors are a mixture. Going to a place gives you details that you might not ever imagine.

Q:  What are a few of your favorite museums?

A:  The Louvre in Paris. It is so amazing that I would say that I haven't accepted it mentally. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is also one of my personal favorites. I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as almost a second home, having gone to art school there; we had a free pass, and I went there all the time. A folk museum in Oslo, Norway -- it had a collection of carved sleighs that brought me to my knees. These sleighs were beautiful. Another time I was moved was in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. There were these horse sculptures discovered at the bottom of the ocean -- they were just found in the '20s. Another personal favorite is in Bad Tölz, Germany, which is where I found the cart for Berlioz the Bear.

Q:  Who would you list as your artistic influences? What about literary influences?

A:  Beatrix Potter is definitely one. Her books were some of the few books that I read and felt like I wasn't being talked down to. She put some difficult words that I never knew in her books, but in the context, I understood them. She valued the reader, and I felt like I had a new word that I learned. I loved to collect new words when I was a child, and Potter made this possible.

Q:  At what point did you realize that you wanted to illustrate and write children's books?

A:  I know that I was about six, but I don't know if it was because I was drawing all the time or because I was practicing it all the time and people kept on telling me that I should draw for children's books.... What I drew looked like it came from a children's book: With a children's book there is always a before and an after. Of course, at the time, I thought I didn't have to study, which was a big mistake. I have done a lot of traveling, which I have used to make up for a lot of lost time.