In order to introduce Jan Brett to the class I would read one of her books not from my list, The Mitten. When I read this book, I will tell the children they have to close their eyes and/or put their head down. They cannot look at the book, and I will not show the pictures in the book. They have to use the descriptive words Jan uses to imagine what is going on in the story and what the pictures look like. Once I am done reading they can then pick their heads up and I will reread the story, this time showing the pictures. I will ask them questions about how the pictures in their mind were different than the pictures on the page. I will also point how descriptive Jan’s illustrations are. I could then ask them if they imagined the pictures in that much detail in their heads. We will then move on to talk about how Jan puts that much detail in all her books and why they think that is important. If time permits we can touch on the subject of how Jan writes about real places, if time does not allow, we will talk about this topic before reading our next book.
