With over thirty four 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. </p>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. </p>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. </p>
A new entry in the Visions in Poetry series offers readers a sophisticated reimagining of Lear's classic children's poem without losing any of its traditional whimsy in the doing, thanks to playful line-and-watercolor illustrations. This edition sets up the well-known romance with several wordless spreads that reveal Owl's privileged origins in a mansion overlooking the canals of an Old World city, his glimpsing the Bohemian Pussycat literally on the other side of the tracks at a subway stop and, most affectingly, their tete-a-tete at an outdoor cafe in the rain before they begin their famous voyage. Citing Fellini, Mir- and The Yellow Submarine as influences, Jorisch sprinkles startling images throughout, from the carnival masks worn as the lovers sail away, to the cross-dressing Piggy-wig who donates his ring, to the mermaid and other fantastical creatures who attend the wedding celebrations. Like others in this series, this volume offers older readers a new chance to revisit hoary classics and to indulge in the imaginative product of a unique artistic vision. The illustrations' worldliness does nothing to blunt the poem's good humor - just presents new possibilities. Delicious. (Picture book/poetry. 10+) (Kirkus Reviews)