Join Simmons University professor and author Megan Dowd Lambert for an introduction to her Whole Book Approach storytime model, developed in association with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Drawing on her book, Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking About What They See (Charlesbridge 2015), Megan will support attendees' engagement with the picture book as a visual art form and will prompt reflection on the difference between reading with children and reading to children. Participants will learn tips for engaging children's visual literacy skills to create dynamic, child-centered, interactive storytimes using diverse books, including Lambert’s own award-winning titles.

Megan Dowd Lambert, Lecturer in Children's Literature at Simmons University, is the author of Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking About What They See (Charlesbridge 2015), which introduces the Whole Book Approach storytime model that she developed in association with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Megan is also a children’s book author, and she won a 2016 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor for A Crow of His Own, illustrated by David Hyde Costello. Her picture book Real Sisters Pretend, illustrated by Nicole Tadgell, was named a 2017 Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People and a Must Read title by the 17th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. Forthcoming titles with Charlesbridge Publishing include: A Kid of Their Own illustrated by Jessica Lanan (February 2020); April and Mae Are Friends (the first in a new early reader series, publishing in 2021); and Book Bonding: A Family's Reading Life (the working title for an essay collection on family reading, publishing in 2021). Megan reviews and writes for Kirkus and The Horn Book and has served as a consultant with Embrace Race: A Community about Race and Kids, the MERGE for Equality Children’s Book Campaign, and OurShelves Diverse Kids Books. The mother of seven children ages 2—22, Megan served on the 2009 Geisel, 2011 Caldecott, and 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award committees, and she lives with her family in Massachusetts where she and her husband own Modern Memoirs, Inc., a noncommercial publishing company focused on personal and family histories.

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