Q & A with Jan Brett

By Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 9/18/2008

In Gingerbread Friends, published this month by Putnam, Jan Brett revisits the sugary hero of 1999’s Gingerbread Baby, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies. To promote her new book, just off press with a 300,000-copy first printing, Brett will spend two weeks touring the country on a bus decorated with art from Gingerbread Friends. Bookshelf spoke to the author from her summer studio in the Berkshires.

What moved you to write a follow-up to Gingerbread Baby?

Usually when I finish a book, it goes into a different place, since there’s no longer anything creative about it on my part. But this book was different. It left me with a nagging feeling, as though I’d left Gingerbread Baby in the lurch. Here he was living in a beautiful house, where Mattie takes care of him. But then I thought about the boy going off to play with his friends and it kept haunting me that Gingerbread Baby needs friends, too. And that means cookie friends, of course. So I started to see a plot unfold about how he might find his own friends. I wanted to leave him in a better place.

But you obviously didn’t write the sequel right away. Why the time lapse?

Well, I thought I’d wait a couple of years to see if I really wanted to go back to the story. A book represents a whole year of my life and I have to love it, since I work on it every day, for hours and hours. But I finally decided I did want to go back to Gingerbread Baby, and part of the reason is that I love to bake. I love the creativity of baking. And I loved drawing those little gingerbread people.

And did you combine these two loves—and bake gingerbread people while drawing them?

As a matter of fact I did. And they became models for me. I made my own cookie cutter and then used it to make gingerbread people. When they came out of the oven, they were pliable and I could twist them into different positions—have them running or sitting. I put the cookies in a big basket in my studio. And soon I noticed the pile was getting smaller and I lifted up the basket and found that a mouse had nibbled away at the basket—and at the cookies. I said, “Oh, I have to put this in the book!” so I did. On one page I put in a mouse nibbling on the marshmallow on Gingerbread Baby’s foot.

Animals play such pivotal roles in so many of your books. Have you always been an animal lover?

Yes, since I was a child I loved animals—and loved to draw them. Now that I look back, I had a very idyllic childhood. Our family took in horses that belonged to summer camps, and they would come and stay with us during the rest of the year. My best friend also loved horses and we’d spend hours drawing them. And my sisters and I had other pets, too—whatever animals we could convince our parents to let us have.

Jan Brett, with a gingerbread friend.

In some ways, animals are easier to use than people. We are more finely attuned to the nuances of human faces, but less so with animals. So I think you’re able to get away with more when you have animal characters. And you are able to project human emotions onto animals. I’ve always felt simpatico toward animals, which I guess underlies my drawings.

There’s one quite unusual animal character in Gingerbread Friends—the large rooster that pulls Gingerbread Baby through the snow on a chair-like sleigh. What inspired that character?

I frequently visit antique stores, and in one shop I found an old postcard of a giant rooster pulling a man in a cart. So that image inspired the book’s rooster. And I am very fond of roosters—in fact my husband and I keep them as pets. I’d love to take them with us on our book tour—I know kids would love to see them. They’re very tame and would be well-behaved, except for early morning. They crow every morning at three o’clock, which I expect would be a problem.

Late next month you take off on a cross-country bus tour, which you’ve done to promote some of your previous books, too. Why travel by bus?

The bus lets my husband and me take so much with us that we otherwise couldn’t bring. I bring an easel, so that I can do drawing demonstrations and encourage kids to follow along and create their own wonderful drawings. I bring posters to give out and a Hedgie costume so that kids can have their picture taken with the hedgehog against a special backdrop from the book. And I travel with my own sound system to make sure that kids will be able to hear me when I speak.

And given your tour itinerary, which includes stops in such spots as Stillwater, Okla., Oxford, Miss. and Minot, N.D., it seems that traveling via bus gives you the chance to reach stores that are somewhat off the beaten author-tour path.

Absolutely. This is a big part of why we do it. There are so many good-sized towns that are nowhere near a major airport and flying to these towns would require a second flight. The bus really gives us a chance to go to a lot of different places, and places that authors don’t usually visit. We meet many kids who are very excited to have an author come to their town, and they bring that excitement in the door with them. I always ask them if they have animals at home and I find their answers provide a litmus test of the community. Some may have goldfish, some may have 50 goats. You get a real sense of the uniqueness of different areas, which doesn’t always happen when visiting big cities.

Do you look forward to returning to your drawing board after the tour?

Oh yes. When I’m not drawing I’m not complete and I don’t think I’m pulling my weight in the world. It is always a relief to me when I’m drawing. But a book tour brings me into reality, since when I work I am by myself, in those worlds I create. Going out on tour is quite surreal. I’m always amazed when people actually quote from one of my books.

And is there a book currently on that drawing board?

I’m working on a book that’s tentatively called The Easter Egg, which will come out next spring. I’ve had a bunny story rattling around in my head for 10 or 15 years and this one’s about the Easter Bunny. I’ve wanted to do a spring book, since that is my favorite season. I spent a lot of time last spring watching my yard come into bloom. I was in heaven, taking lots of photographs and making lots of sketches. The best part of doing this book was designing the Easter Bunny’s wagon—it’s pulled by big fat chickens with fluffy, feathered feet so the Bunny can travel stealthily. I’m halfway done with the book, and I haven’t taken the big step of buying myself a bunny. Not yet.

Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett. Putnam, $17.99 ISBN 978-0-399-25161-0