About Megan Dowd Lambert

Author photo by RoryJLPhotography.com (2021)

Megan Dowd Lambert grew up in Vermont and earned her BA at Smith College, where she majored in African American Studies and Government. She earned her MA in Children’s Literature at Simmons University (formerly, Simmons College), where she taught in some capacity for more than a decade. Her experiences as a white mother of seven children in a blended, multiracial, queer, adoptive family inform her work as a children’s book author, reviewer, and educator. Megan reviews and writes for Kirkus and The Horn Book, is a consultant with Embrace Race: A Community about Race and Kids, and served as an inaugural member of the Curation Team of OurShelves.

Megan’s books include, 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 to storytime that she developed in association with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. In 2009 she was named a Literacy Champion by Mass Literacy, and she has served on the 2009 Geisel, 2011 Caldecott, and the 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Committees. Her essay collection, Book Bonding: Building Connections Through Family Reading, will publish in 2023. She is also currently compiling a collection of 75 Whole Book Approach Storytime Plans to share with teachers, librarians, parents, and anyone else who reads with children.

In 2016 Megan won an Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor for her first picture book, A Crow of His Own, illustrated by David Hyde Costello (Charlesbridge 2015). Her second picture book, Real Sisters Pretend, illustrated by Nicole Tadgell (Tilbury House) was published in 2016 and was longlisted as a Must Read Picture Book/Early Reader title by the 17th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. Charlesbridge published A Kid of Their Own, a sequel to A Crow of His Own, in 2020, with illustrations by Jessica Lanan, which was longlisted as a Must Read Picture Book/Early Reader title by the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. Her new beginning reader series Every Day with April & Mae is about two girls who are best friends and will debut with Charlesbridge in 2022 with illustrations by Briana Dengoue.

In 2019 Megan and her husband, Sean St. Marie, became the new owners of Modern Memoirs, Inc., a noncommercial publishing company based in Amherst, MA. Megan serves as president of the business, which specializes in working with clients on memoirs and family history projects. Her own work-in-progress in this vein, The Sentimental Archivist, is a collection of essays inspired by heirlooms and family history objects. Megan brings to her work in this new venture the conviction that everyone’s story is worth telling, and a belief in the transformative power of radical listening.