Friday, February 27, 2015

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOSSOM!

On February 25th, our lamb celebrated her first birthday.


Monday, February 23, 2015

Three Bears Arrive from Australia



Meyer Department Store in Melbourne, Australia chooses a different theme each year for their Christmas windows.  In 2014, they chose a book that I illustrated, SANTA CLAUS AND THE THREE BEARS, by Maria Modugno.  This is part 1 of four videos that can be found on you tube.  It was so much fun to see my illustrations come to life.

They sent me the first set of bears which just arrived.  We have plenty of snow for them, so I put them outside to do some reading.



Tuesday, February 10, 2015

New Book

Today is the pub date for my new book with Sally Lloyd-Jones.                                                        This is from The Horn Book Review:


THE HOUSE THAT’S YOUR HOME
by Sally Lloyd-Jones; illus. by Jane Dyer Schwartz & Wade/Random   2/15    978-0-375-85884-0    
In a picture book that feels at once nostalgic and fresh, Lloyd-Jones and Dyer channel the best of contemporary mood pieces (see, for example, Scanlon and Frazee’s All the World, rev. 9/09) and the everyday-life books of yesteryear (such as Krauss and Sendak’s A Hole Is to Dig, rev. 10/52). A familiar home-away-home structure follows a little girl from the “house that’s [her] home” to school and back again, as she engages with her family, pets, and the world all around her (in a refreshing twist, it concludes with the child awakening to a new day instead of drifting off to sleep). Throughout, a soothing, rhythmic text embraces childlike phrasing with lines such as “A bike is Your Bike / That rides you around” and hits just-right notes to capture the happiest parts of childhood’s emotional landscape: “A friend is Your Friend / Who stays by your side / And chooses you first / And saves you a place.” There are no tears or hardships in sight, and Dyer’s soft gouache and pencil illustrations perfectly match the text’s depiction of childhood idyll. The graceful hand lettering adds much to the book’s pleasing design, and its clear readability will be a boon to adults who will doubtlessly engage in repeated readings with children in their own homes. megan dowd lambert