Megan Dowd Lambert

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How Elegant the Elephant

For years I’ve harbored a not-so-secret wish that Marla Frazee would illustrate a Mother Goose collection. With her Caldecott-worthy interpretation of Mary Ann Hoberman’s How Elegant the Elephant: Poems about Animals and Insects, she has delivered the next best thing. Through vivid visual characterization of a range of anthropomorphic creatures,...
PREMIUM

Review of Fish Don’t Go to School

Fish Don’t Go to School by Deb Pilutti; illus. by the authorPreschool, Primary    Ottaviano/Little, Brown    40 pp.7/25    9780316565271    $18.99Henry loves wearing a fish costume that matches his pet goldfish, Marigold, and plans to wear it when he starts school—a milestone about which he is anxious. His parents try to reason...

Review of When I Move

When I Move by Carole Boston Weatherford; illus. by Alea Marley Preschool, Primary    Union Square    40 pp. 4/25    9781454945543    $18.99 This is a picture book tailor-made for storytime: Weatherford’s succinct first-person text makes great use of repetition, as well as end rhymes that beg for children’s voices to complete. Well-paced...

Review of Wonder Why

Wonder Why by Lisa Varchol Perron; illus. by Nik Henderson Primary    Harper/HarperCollins    32 pp. 4/25    9780063310421    $19.99 Perron’s accessible STEM-friendly text about meteorological phenomena grounds itself in that quintessential question of childhood: “Why?” On alternating spreads, rhymed verses in a singsong cadence pose questions to the sky, wind, clouds, thunder,...

Review of Toto

Toto by Hyewon Yum; illus. by the author Primary    Porter/Holiday    40 pp. 1/25    9780823453894    $18.99 e-book ed.  9780823462322    $11.99 “Toto” isn’t the young protagonist’s name but rather what she calls the large birthmark on her forehead. Opening lines read, “Sometimes I wonder how I would look without Toto.” Despite loving...

Review of Meena's Saturday

Meena’s Saturday by Kusum Mepani; illus. by Yasmeen Ismail Primary    Kokila/Penguin    40 pp. 10/24    9780593110317    $18.99 e-book ed.  9780593110324    $10.99 This captivating ode to weekly gatherings of friends and extended family brims with affection for foods, activities, and traditions shared by a loving, large group crowded together in the narrator’s...

Noodles on a Bicycle

A tall portrait layout might have been the natural choice for Noodles on a Bicycle, with its depictions of bicycling demae (deliverymen) who balance gravity-defying towers of trays and bowls of soba noodles as they move through the streets of Tokyo. Instead, Zhang opted for a square trim, which infuses her illustrations...
PREMIUM

Review of Lefty: A Story That Is Not All Right

Lefty: A Story That Is Not All Right by Mo Willems; illus. by Dan SantatPrimary    Union Square    40 pp.12/24    9781454951483    $18.99With each spread decorated as a simple stage, photo collages of two goggle-eyed, bespectacled hands-as-puppets enter on verso and recto. The one on the left is clad with a cuff...

Touch the Sky

When I first saw Chris Park’s jacket art for Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic’s Touch the Sky, I was struck by its bold colors, display type that would fit right into street art near a city playground, and by painterly, energetic brushstrokes evoking the soaring movement of the  child on a...
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