Annie and the Wild Animals is the book that started my Jan Brett
collection, and I actually own two copies of it, one in hardcover and
one in soft. My aunts gave me the hardcover as a Christmas gift in 1987.
Four years later, one of those same aunts gave me the book for a second
time, this time autographed by the author. Her autographs are
especially neat, as she not only signs her name but adds a small
illustration.
Many of Brett’s books are based on folktales,
but as far as I can tell this one is an original. It follows the story
of Annie, a little girl with blond, braided hair and crystal blue eyes
living in a cozy cabin with her cat Taffy. When Taffy, who has been
acting strangely lately, disappears, Annie becomes very lonesome in her
little house surrounded on all sides by snow and trees. It’s the dead of
winter, and Annie has no one with which to share her home. Determined
to find a new pet, Annie leaves corn cakes at the edge of the forest
with ever more disastrous results. She does attract animals, yes, but
none suitable to replace her lost furry companion. What’s worse, the
animals are hungry and she is running out of corn cakes…
This book contains far less text than Town Mouse Country Mouse,
and the print is much bigger. Even more than in that book, the
illustrations in this book tell the story, with many layers to be found
upon close inspection. The words are very sparse and only tell in the
most basic of terms what is going on. The full-page illustrations are
very detailed and well-done, but it is in the borders that the most
detail lies. Brett often asks her readers to look beyond the obvious and
look for the deeper story. With Brett more than any other illustrator, I
have learned that illustrations are a literary vehicle which can be
read just as carefully, and with just as many rewards, as words.
Each border is very different. For instance, on the page wherein Taffy
vanishes, the border features an array of snowflakes, and four small
pictures show Taffy making her way across the snow, past birds and a
rabbit, and into a cozy tree. Another border, on the page featuring a
bear whom Annie decides is too grumpy for a pet, has a wooden-looking
trim with pictures of wolves and deer, who will come for the next round
of corn cakes, and a small glimpse of Taffy, who is nestled in the tree
hollow with her three newborn kittens. The illustrations extremely
detailed, and the animals’ personalities are well defined. One of the
best illustrations features a jumble of irate bears, cantankerous moose,
snappy wolves, agitated deer, and leering bobcats, all impatiently
waiting outside Annie’s cabin for their next meal.
The
illustrations really do the talking in this story, and they do it
extraordinarily well. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t very many
words here. The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”
certainly applies here. A couple of lingering questions: How did Taffy
get out? This isn’t too problematic; I assume she probably found some
hole in a corner somewhere that she could squeeze through; after all,
she’s obviously been outside at least once before. The more persistent
question: What is a little girl doing living all by herself in a cabin
in the middle of nowhere? And where does she get her food from? But
these questions are mere curiosities and certainly don’t detract from
the book, whose illustrations you can return to again and again, finding
something new each time.
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