Beauty and the Beast

With more than 44 million books in print, Jan Brett is one of the nation’s foremost illustrators of children’s books.  As a child, she decided to be an illustrator and spent much of her time reading and drawing. As a student at the Boston Museum School, Jan spent many hours in the Museum of Fine Arts. Travel is also a constant inspiration, so with her husband, Joe Hearne, who was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, she visits many different countries where she researches the architecture and costumes that appear in her work. Jan lives in a seacoast town in Massachusetts.