Jan Brett's The Nutcracker

by Jan Brett, Jan Brett (Illustrator)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Decadent and magical is the perfect way to describe the incomparable Jan Brett’s illustrations in this Christmas classic. This wonderful celebration of the timeless Christmas tale is an ideal heirloom gift and one that’s sure to be cherished for generations.

Jan Brett's striking illustrations and the Christmas classic The Nutcracker are a match made in picture book heaven.

When Marie and her brother Fritz receive a special Christmas nutcracker from their uncle, Marie immediately feels something magical. "He looks like a real boy," she mused. "A real boy with a secret, who came from far away."

This feeling is only the beginning of the epic adventure she goes on with the Nutcracker—into the cabinet, through the battle with the mice, and finally to the magical land of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Jan Brett makes this classic her own by setting it in snowy Russia and adding whimsical touches to the favorite elements of the traditional ballet. Enjoying this book will be an instant Christmas tradition for families who love the ballet and those new to the story.
As perfect a gift as Jan Brett's classics The Mitten and The Night Before Christmas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593109823
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	11/16/2021
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	10,402
Product dimensions:	11.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	AD850L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jan Brett is the beloved bestselling author/artist of many books for children.

Editorial Reviews

09/13/2021

E.T.A. Hoffmann’s famous Christmas story of the girl and the wooden nutcracker receives Brett’s signature treatment in this picture book rendition, which features rich embellishments, white characters in elaborate period costumes, intricate movement and detail, and vignettes around many spreads’ borders. Keeping to the story’s well-known arc, Brett imagines visual variations in watercolor and gouache spreads that interweave moments from the ballet. Instead of human characters, animals are cast in the traditional second act: Bears dance the Russian Trepak, Arctic foxes perform the Danse Arabe (“their foxtails entwining”), and reindeer with candles on their antlers accompany Marie to a gingerbread house, where waltzing hedgehogs’ quills are studded with tiny yellow flowers. Vivid, descriptive language adds further depth: “The sleigh glided through a dreamland of icicles until they heard lively music—molto vivace—playing.” A Christmas confection laced with an Old World sensibility. Ages 4–8. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Animals are cast in the traditional second act: Bears dance the Russian Trepak, Arctic foxes perform the Danse Arabe (“their foxtails entwining”), and reindeer with candles on their antlers accompany Marie to a gingerbread house, where waltzing hedgehogs’ quills are studded with tiny yellow flowers. Vivid, descriptive language adds further depth. . . A Christmas confection laced with an Old World sensibility.” —Publisher's Weekly

From the Publisher

2021-08-18
Brett applies her signature visual storytelling style to the Christmas favorite.

By setting her tale in a snowy, 19th-century Russian city and including in her trademark marginal vignettes both golden musical staves crowded with notes and animal instrumentalists clad in traditional Russian attire, Brett situates this retelling in Tchaikovsky’s ballet rather than Hoffman’s original story, though she retains Hoffman’s names. And as the ballet does, Brett crams her stage with characters, beginning with the Christmas party when Drosselmeier presents Marie with the Nutcracker and continuing through the battle with the Mouse King to Marie and the Nutcracker’s visit to what is here called the land of the Snow Princess. Once there, anthropomorphic Russian animals replace the ethnically stereotyped sweets of the ballet, with arctic foxes, flying squirrels, and hedgehogs taking turns in a snowy wonderland. Like the plot of the ballet, not much makes sense under close examination; unlike the ballet, Brett’s figures display very little movement, so hemmed in are they. Even compositions with relatively few figures feel crowded with decorative detail and superfluous tiny animals, so much so that readers may need to work hard to parse meaning. Despite its adherence to the plot of the ballet, this is not a particularly good preparation for it, but readers already familiar with it may enjoy taking in Brett’s vision. All human characters present White. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Both busy and meandering, but readers may like the dancing Cossack bears. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews