There are a few truly great children’s book authors – storytellers who can take a piece of imagination and bring it alive with the touch of a pen.
They’ve got that magical touch, mesmerizing children (and parents too) for generations. Jan Brett is one of those greats.
Maureen over at Brooklyn Elementary Strong Start first introduced us to Brett – who is also a fantastically fun illustrator, telling stories through words and pictures unlike any other author the tiny person and I have come across (there’s always a peek into the next scene along the edges of the pages making for fun guessing and lots of excitement).
Brett has literally dozens of books in print. But, two Winter adventures have taken the cake for us lately.
We started reading Brett’s retelling of the Ukranian folk tale The Mitten a few weeks ago and haven’t been able to put it down since.
This sweet little tale about a lost mitten that warms up a whole forest of animals is a sneak peek into the world of Winter time animals and a great way to take a common event (losing your mittens) and turn it into a fun adventure.
The tiny person loves that the mitten gets so huge and all of the creatures “want to snuggle.” The only catch is that I have found a few mittens in the backyard strategically placed to see if the animals will really make them home.:)
I just got the notice this morning that it’s due back at the library. Guess we are off for a new round of Jan Brett seasonal goodness like Three Snow Bears and The Hat which I suspect our pal Charlotte would love.:).
With the holidays wrapped up, the tiny person is still suffering from a little seasonal withdrawl.
Jan Brett’s cure for the post-Christmas blues has most definitely been Gingerbread Friends.
On a search for friendship, a spunky gingerbread baby gets down when her adventure at a local bakery turns up a whole bunch of cookie creatures who are, well, less than animated.
Turns out that gingerbread baby’s human friend spent the day in the kitchen making a whole world of friends and baby is no longer so lonely.
While gingerbread is a holiday treat, this sweet tale is just plain silly fun on a chilly Winter day.
As a note, the Jan Brett Website is PACKED FULL of reading resources, colouring pages, games and other fun to take the books from story time to all out learning fun.
We’re going to do a whole unit on Winter animals using The Mitten as our base. Too bad I stink at knitting.:)
Literacy Lasts A Lifetime
Inspired by stories as a child, Robin spends a whole lot of time reading with her family. She reviews books that bring imagination to life for kids of all ages twice a month. If you are interested in having a book reviewed, recommending excellent reads or touching base with Robin about our work to promote early literacy in Canada and around the globe, contact her at editor@ourbigearth.com
Robin, this coming week our focus book is The Mitten. We’ll be doing lots of crafts and activities around it. The one that I enjoy the most is dramatizing the story. I’ll use a large white sheet for the mitten and have printed off the animal masks from Jan Brett’s website for the children to wear. They’ll crawl into the mitten as we go through the story and end up spread all around when the bear sneezes. Always lots of fun to act out stories. Maybe even some of the parents will be willing to crawl in:)
You’re right about The Hat Robin, in fact we just took it back the other day! Love the Gingerbread Baby and Friend’s books too, the pictures are amazing.
We love Jan Brett! My mother-in-law (a former teacher) first got us into Jan Brett. My youngest loves The Hat or any story that features Hedgie! This past Christmas, we bought a Jan Brett collection through the Scholastic book program at my daughter’s school. She has some really great Christmas books that we read through the holidays, with great messages of giving and sharing.
My favourite Christmas ones were:
The Christmas Trolls – a young girl teaches the trolls that Christmas is about giving, not getting
The Wild Christmas Reindeer – a young girl learns that yelling is not the way to get co-operation (a great reminder for me at a stressful time of year!)
I so love the illustrations, and the stories really resonate with my 5 and 2 year olds. I love that the illustrations around the page are done in a way that tells more of a story than the words themselves. In The Mitten, for instance, you can see that the boy disturbs each animal before they go into the mitten. It makes the books good for quiet reading time, as the children can really see story unfolding, even without someone to read the words.