An Open Letter to Jan Brett

Below is a letter to Jan Brett regarding her new book Three Snow Bears. The letter is written by Theresa Seidel.
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An Open Letter to Jan Brett

I met you over twenty years ago when my daughter was in kindergarten and you visited her school during a young author conference. I became an instant admirer of your books. They are always beautifully done and your work as an illustrator is second to none. The use of borders to tell “the rest of the story” is a feature I always look forward to seeing. Your joy for writing shows through when you work with children.

As an Indigenous woman and a worker in a public library, I find your newest book, The Three Snow Bears, bothersome on many levels. I don’t feel honored when someone not of a culture appropriates elements of an indigenous culture for their own gain.

My red flag was:

I first saw the book when a mother and daughter picked it up and the mother said that she could use it to read as a “Native American” story to her daughter’s class. After reading the cover flaps of the book, I could see why. You do not claim to be Native American. You had traveled to Baffin Island to study the people and animals. You go on to explain how you looked at the faces of the children and got the character, Aloo-ki. The book is not a Native American story. It is a story of the three bears and Goldilocks done with an Inuit twist.

You went to the museum and studied the displays and artwork. You say that you saw traditional clothing on animal artwork in a museum and that was the inspiration for your book. I do understand that the people you visited have this depicted in THEIR artwork. But it belongs to them. They shared their culture with you. Did they do this with the intention that you would take it and make it into a book?

I was holding your book and seeing snow bears wearing traditional Inuit clothing. For hundreds of years Native people have been treated as less than human. This book immediately brings to mind another book done to “honor” Native people, Ten Little Rabbits,” by Virginia Grossman. Ten Little Rabbits is just a remake of Ten Little Indians with rabbits wearing Native attire. Depicting minority populations as animals in children’s books has long been used as a de-humanizing tactic.

I could not believe that you, Jan Brett, would do this, so I turned to your website for more information. Upon looking at the mural page, I had my answer. This page describes the outfits on each of the bears and tells about those items of clothing in Inuit life. I am not Inuit so I cannot speak to whether the information presented is accurate. The Goldilocks character’s outfit is not mentioned, but rather how she drives a sled team.

Another concern that I have about the book is that Aloo-ki steals boots. The children ages 3-6, to whom I read, would catch this almost immediately. They know that you don’t take something that belongs to another and keep it without asking. Aloo-ki took the boots not because she needed them, but because they were prettier than the boots she was wearing.

This book could have been nicely done without a Native twist. I am really trying to understand your motivation for using an Inuit theme for this book. Do you feel you are promoting a culture by showcasing it to the world? Did the people you visited ask you to do so; or did you assume that by them sharing culture with you that you had the right to use it? Are you going to give back to the community something for appropriating their culture?

Is this something you will continue to do as you travel? I did have some qualms after reading your {Jan Brett} book “Honey…Honey…Lion” as it took a story from an Indigenous culture to use. It was nice to see money from this book supporting a local foundation. Does giving back to the locals after cultural appropriation make it okay?

Here are the criteria I used for judging The Three Snow Bears:

Is the book written by a Native author or with a Native author?

Is it using another culture to gain financial rewards?

Is the book depicting Native people as less than human?

Could you remove the Native aspects and still have a good book? If so, what was the motivation to include them?

Is the culture being portrayed correctly?

Please explain how this book should make an Indigenous person feel “honored.”

Respectfully,

Theresa Seidel

Note: I did send a letter to Jan Brett on her “contact the author” portion of her web page, so that she could reply to me in private. She did not reply to my letter.