ON NOAH'S ARK
Written and illustrated by Jan Brett
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons

As a child, New York Times Best-selling author Jan Brett wondered how all of the animals could fit on Noah's Ark? Especially the animals that preyed on other animals? She would imagine what it must have been like to have all of those squiggling, crawling, bellowing, swimming, and flying creatures confined in one space. Why didn't they eat one another?

As an adult, Ms. Brett answers that child-like question in On Noah's Ark. Told from the view point of Noah's granddaughter, the animals board the ark by size until the Ark is over-flowing with critters - mammals, reptiles, flying creatures, water creatures, insects - there's barely room for them all. They push and shove, fall all over each other as the great Ark sets sail for forty days and forty nights. As the rain comes down, the Ark begins to gently rock back and forth putting all of the animals to sleep. Noah's granddaughter then goes around the Ark untangling and separating the animals so they're comfortable, eventually falling asleep herself with a lion as a pillow! Ms. Brett captures the joy of a dove returning with green growth in its beak, telling all on board that the Flood is now over and they can disembark to land once more. And the exodus from the Ark is chaotic as the animals, free at last, crawl, run, fly and swim to the four corners of the earth, as fast as their means of propulsion can move them!

Ms. Brett has a great love of nature and animals, which she loves to paint. The ancient story of the Great Flood presents her with the magnificent opportunity to exercise her pleasure and skill by portraying over 200 - "Give or take a few" - birds, animals, insects, fish, and reptiles. Her use of color and form to illustrate the animals in the confines of the ark is spectacular, each page a wonderful "bestiary" of color and design. Her signature side panels illustrate, in shape and interior art, life on the Ark, some to comic effect - a dodo bird tripping over the head of a wolf, or two little hedgehogs caught between two large sows.

Ms. Brett and her husband, Joe Hearne, traveled to Africa to do research on animals in their natural habitat, and while traveling in dugout canoes in the channels of the Okavango Delta, they saw huge areas of papyrus, inspiring Ms. Brett to use papyrus paper for her borders. Of the African venture, Ms. Brett said, "To be physically close to Africa's creatures was a primal, rapturous experience." And that primal and rapturous experience is evident in every brushstroke of her illustrations.

Jan Brett has been represented several times on The New York Times Best Seller list, with such books as The Night Before Christmas, Daisy Comes Home, Whose That Knocking on Christmas Eve, and Jan Brett's Christmas Treasury. Her work is beloved of teachers and librarians who access her website - www.janbrett.com -- for use in the classroom. Her website receives millions of visitors each year, one of the most active children's authors' websites in the world.