Jan Brett

Hi people,

Tuesday was the big news day for us this week.  S got braces, or at least the first phase of them.  She is adjusting.  I think the hardest part will be figuring out what to feed her now, nothing crunchy, chewy or sticky? Blech!  I didn't specifically take a photo of her braces, so you'll just have to notice them in the other shots.

Tuesday evening the kids and I got to meet Jan Brett, the illustrator!!!!  I don’t know why I thought arriving a few minutes early would be no problem; I mean it IS Jan Brett we are talking about here!  There were over 600 people there to see her too!!  She’s on tour, promoting her newest book, Cinders ~ A Chicken Cinderella.  She arrived in a huge tour bus with the cover of the book supersized all over it, just like the rock star illustrator that she is.  

Anyway, Jan Brett raises chickens and brought three of her own that were models for her illustrations in this new book.  (How many music rock stars do you think have live, pet chickens in THEIR tour buses?) 

She told us about her travels in Russia to get ideas for the architecture and costumes that she used in the book.  And then she showed us how she to draw Cinders, the Cinderella chicken!  We were waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back and we weren’t even the farthest back, so we were glad that my new camera (Canon PowerShot SX280 HS in red, incase you were wondering) has a 20x optical zoom.

After the lecture and demonstration she was available to sign books.  Apparently they handed out numbers as you entered, but they ran out at 600 (before we got there).  They started with numbers 1 -10 being allowed to get out of their seats to form a line for autographs!  There were 600 plus groans when we realized how long this was going to take.  Luckily one of our friends was leaving without getting anything signed and she gave us their number, 133, so we only waited for an hour and a half.  We read the books we’d brought to be signed, got to be good friends with the chickens, 

took pictures of the tour bus and with Hedgie, the hedgehog who stars in many of her books.  

I asked the kids several times if it really was all that important to them to get her signature and S especially was adamant that it indeed was important; so we did.  

Meanwhile, M, who is not used to finding himself home alone, was headed out to report 4 missing persons when we came up the hill after school night bedtime; something that NEVER happens . . ., but it IS Jan Brett we are talking about here!