Life
Brett was born and grew up in Massachusetts and
continues to
live there, dividing her time between her home in Norwell, along the
South Shore, and a summer home in the Berkshires. As a child, she
very early decided she wanted to be a
picture book illustrator, and she attributes her creativity in part to
her mother's encouragement. She says that as a child she "felt drawn
into the pages of her picture books" and she tries to achieve the same
effect with her own work - "to gain verisimilitude, she uses real
people and places as models." (SATA)
She studied at the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts School to develop her abilities, and began her career as an
illustrator
with Woodland Crossings
(written by Stephen Krensky) in 1978; she has illustrated
several books by Eve Bunting, among others, and has done several
adaptations
of folk material, including Goldilocks
and the Three Bears (1987) and The
Mitten (1989). In 1981 she created her first entirely
self-generated
work, Fritz and the Beautiful Horses.
Many of her books employ folk-art
motifs from Eastern Europe or Scandinavia.
Brett is married to a member of the Boston
Symphony, which helps to understand the interest in music expressed in
Berlioz.
Between his work and hers, they travel abroad freuently, where she
researches architecture and costumes for her books.
Berlioz the Bear
This book was published in 1991, the sixth
self-illustrated book that Brett produced. It was selected as one
of the best books of the year by Newsweek, by the American
Bookseller,
and by the New Yorker.
Berlioz the Bear is based on a traditional
folk tale type, in which a problem occurs and a chain of creatures each
in turn attempts to resolve the difficulty.
Several popular children's books have been created around such tales,
notably The Enormous Carrot
or The Enormous Turnip, in
which whole communities of creatures must be called in to pull the
eponymous vegetable from the ground. The specific tale presented
here - the musician who is perplexed by a buzzing sound in his
instrument - was inspired by her husband, who plays the double
bass. According to Brett, once when she was at an outdoor
concert, she wondered what kind of animal might fit in her husband's
instrument (here we can see a fascination with animals inhabiting
strange environments, which is a feature of her books The Mitten, The Hat, and The Umbrella). She asked her
husband if his instrument was ever affected by the weather, and he told
her that dry weather could take moisture from the wood, resulting in a
buzzing sound - hence the decision to put a bee inside the bass.
Berlioz and his fellow musicians are modeled on her husband Joe and
other BSO musicians.
If an ordinary picture book can be said to
contain three stories (the story of the words, the story of the
pictures,
and the story produced by both combined), Brett's books may be seen to
have at least one additional story -- the contrapuntal story taking
place
in the frame. One reviewer, noting that the borders and side
panel
offer aspects of the story not included in the main text and pictures,
described the story of the borders as "a story around a story" (Pat
Ross,
qtd. in SATA); Brett herself says "Often I put borders in my
books
to contain the overflow of thoughts." (SATA) The frame in Berlioz
is particularly adapted to this story, as it resembles the proscenium
of
a theatrical stage or orchestra shell; frames in her other works are
also
appropriate to a theme or cultural element in the story as a whole.
The elaborate borders have become a kind of
trademark for Brett, as has the recurrence of certain animals in her
art
(even if not directly acknowledged in the text) -- e.g., the hedgehogs
seen in the title page and frames of Berlioz). Her work
often focuses on
animals and uses material from European folklore.
The composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was
"the greatest musical figure in the French Romantic movement" (Oxford
Companion to Music) and was renowned for his numerous love affairs
as well as for his music. He particularly liked large orchestral
pieces with an enormous orchestra; Berlioz the Bear's orchestra, in
contrast,
is fairly small and compact, and the story's setting is Bavaria.
It thus seems
likely that Brett chose the name for its alliterative qualities rather
than for any direct allusion to the composer or his work.