I found a few other editions including one shaped like a mitten and a board book pack which included a mitten! Perhaps next Winter (it is Spring right now here in Australia) you might like to find a few different version of The Mitten to share with your class. In this School Library Journal blog post Elizabeth Bird talks about The Mitten. She brings the animals to life with warmth and humour, and her illustrations are full of visual delights and details faithful to the Ukrainian tradition, from which the story comes.' Once again Jan Brett has created a dramatic and beautiful picture book in her distinctive style. As the story of the animals in the mitten unfolds, the reader can see Nicki in the borders of each page, walking through the woods unaware of what is going on.

Finally, a big brown bear is followed in by a tiny brown mouse, and what happens next makes a wonderfully funny climax. One by one, woodland animals find the mitten and crawl in first a curious mole, then a rabbit, a badger and others, each one larger than the last. 'When Nicki drops his white mitten in the snow, he goes on without realising that it is missing. On her website Jan Brett describes her version: When I checked her blog post I read she liked the one illustrated by Yaroslava because: ' the language is better here as it is detailed and descriptive and the story fun.' I assumed this was the Jan Brett (1989) version but she said no so this made me curious to read this old tale and to seek out different copies. Recently my friend from Kinderbookswitheverything talked about The Mitten and the way she had several versions in her school library but there was one she especially liked. One review called this a 'progression tale.' In the version by Alvin Tresselt, pictured above, the mitten disintegrates after the arrival of the final creature whereas in Jan Brett's version the boy finds the mitten and we see his grandmother standing puzzled as she compares its size against the original. In the version by Alvin Tresselt the mitten is taken over by a tiny mouse, a green frog, an owl, a rabbit, a fox, a wolf, a wild boar, a bear and finally a tiny cricket. In the Jan Brett version the animals include a snowshoe rabbit, a mole, a hedgehog, an owl, a badger, a fox, a giant brown bear and a tiny meadow mouse. The mitten stretches and stretches to accommodate animals which are diverse in size and temperament. A series of animals discover the warm mitten and each one climbs inside. A young boy (or in some versions an old man) drops his mitten in the snow.

The mitten a ukrainian folktale