With over twenty six million books in print, #1 New York Times Bestselling children’s book author Jan Brett is one of the nation’s foremost author/illustrators of children’s books. An alumnus of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, she attended Colby-Sawyer college and holds an honorary doctor of humane letter degree from Fitchburg State College.

Jan Brett lives in a seacoast town in Massachusetts close to where she grew up. During the summer her family moved to a cabin in the Berkshire Mountains. As a child, Ms. 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.”

Ms. Brett says that many of her ideas come from her memory. As a student at the Boston Museum School she spent hours in the Museum of Fine Arts. “It was overwhelming to see room size landscapes and towering stone sculpture, 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, who is a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Brett visits many of the countries of the world. There she researches the architecture and costumes which 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.”