Top 100 Picture Books #94: The Mitten by Jan Brett

#94 The Mitten by Jan Brett (1989)
21 points

A lovely retelling of this old folktale with Brett’s truly lovely illustrations. – Barbara Thompson

As insane as it sounds, this is Ms. Brett’s first appearance on one of our polls.  Prolific and still going strong she first came to my attention due to her knitting.  Some authors just throw stuff together and clearly don’t care to show every stitch in a sweater.  Brett isn’t like them.  The whole reason this book works as well as it does is that you can see the stitches in that beloved mitten stretching and growing as more and more animals test their tensile strength.  Why I haven’t seen knitting to match this until Mac Barnett’s Extra Yarn with Jon Klassen’s illustrations came along.

The description from PW reads, “Baba, Nicki’s grandmother, knits pure white mittens for him, even though she is afraid that he will lose them in the snow. Sure enough, the first time Nicki is out, he drops one and some animals promptly move into its snug wool interior. First comes a mole, then a rabbit, a hedgehog, an owl, a badger, a fox, a bear and, finally, a mouse. That mouse tickles the bear’s nose and he sneezes, dislodging all of the animals at once. Nicki finds his mitten, and takes it home, but Baba is left to wonder about how it became so enormously stretched out.”

Now this is by no means the first picture book version of The Mitten to garner attention.  Before Brett the go-to Mitten of note was by one Alvin R. Tresselt, seen here:

For what it’s worth, it’s still gorgeous.

Later came the Jim Aylesworth version with illustrations by Barbara McClintock:

Publishers Weekly said of it, “Brett’s magnificent paintings feature her usual array of folk details, and this time, intricate knitting tracks, ornate embroidery, the crusty, peeling texture of the birch bark borders and the exquisite patterns found in Baba’s homey rooms. Readers will sit back, suspend belief and welcome this tall tale from the Ukrainian tradition.”

• Anita Silvey has a nice write-up of the book on the Book-a-Day Almanac.

And then there’s this interview with Ms. Brett herself:

Filed under: Best Books, Top 100 Picture Books Poll