Why did Brett put the eye-catching embroidery in each frame? Is it merely decorative or does it pull your eye to something important. Notice the details: the plates over the fireplace, Nicki and Baba's clothing, Nicki's boots, the thatched roof with the crossed sticks on top, the birds' nest near the chimney.Now the frame shows how the boy's play disturbs the animals in their natural habitat, and each creature is forced to move that is when it invades the mitten. When the two figures join on the second page main picture and Baba begins knitting the white mittens, the scene in the frame switches to the outdoors. At first we see Baba preparing the yarn while the main illustrations show Nicki, mittenless, playing in the snow. Her mitten shaped frames within the border frames continue to remind us that the mitten is the important item here. The yarn Brett uses for her mitten makes the tale almost believable.īrett uses the page frames to allow her to show two scenes at once. It's grandmother who, knowing nothing of what happens, notices the now-stretched out mitten. Just at the point where Nicki approaches, searching for his lost mitten, the mouse causes the bear to sneeze the mitten and all its occupants go flying the boy catches sight of the airborne mitten and retrieves it. A mole is the first to discover the mitten lying on the snow and crawls inside, followed by a snowshoe rabbit, a hedgehog, an owl, a badger, a fox, a bear and, finally, a mouse.Įach time the inhabitants protest that there's not enough room for the newcomer, but to no avail and grandmother's skillful knitting holds fast as the mitten stretches beyond belief. Grandmothers, however, are usually right and it isn't long before we notice, although he does not, that he has dropped a mitten. In spite of her warnings that he will lose them and that they will be hard to find in the snow, he insists and she finally does so. This time it's a boy, Nicki, who begs his grandmother, Baba, to knit him a pair of white mittens. Jan Brett has put her own spin on the familiar folk theme of a shelter which stretches to accommodate each new occupant. You may know the earlier version of the same basic story by Alvin Tresselt (see below).

Animals in the mitten book