The Mitten by Jan Brett

G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1989.
Hardcover edition, 32 pages, ISBN 0-399-21920-X.

Brett's signature style is simple and elegant, charmingly evocative of a northern European winter scene, in this delightful retelling of a Ukranian folktale. A lovely birchbark border with faux embroidered appliques and mitten-shaped cut-outs frames each story panel. Inside each cut-out is a small predictive scene of what the reader will discover on the following page.

Nicki begs his Baba to knit white wool mittens for him, although she warns that they will be too easily lost in the deep snowy expanses outside their cottage door. Predictably, he loses one quite quickly. A succession of increasingly larger animals looking for a cozy spot find the mitten and, one by one, squeeze themselves inside. When an enormous bear has finally strained the limits of the stretchy yarn, a tiny meadow mouse curls up on his nose. This tickles the bear into a gargantuan sneeze, which blows all of the animals out of the mitten and scatters them to the four winds. Nicki spots his mitten flying through the air and joyfully retrieves it. A last full-sized, mitten-shaped picture shows Baba looking in a quite mystified manner at the two mittens, one perfectly normal, and the other stretched into an enormous version of its original self.

Children love the repetitive nature of the addition of each new animal to the mitten, and especially enjoy the sneezy explosion, dramatically produced. Great for storytime about winter for both toddlers and preschoolers, and wonderful to explore the sidebar details on an individual basis. A rather labor-intensive craft involves coloring a giant mitten and animal cut-outs with which the children can recreate the story. The story can also be told with flannel board or puppets for a change of routine.

Narrative skills are enhanced in retelling the story with appropriate props. Toddlers develop a vocabulary of woodland animals.

ALA Booklist Magazine Best Children's Books of the 1980s
New Yorker Magazine Best Children's Books, 1989
National Teachers Association Top Ten Titles for Elementary Students, 1999
National Education Association Educators' Top One Hundred Children's Books, 2007