Personal+Reflection

Discovering Lane Smith...the illustrator and the author After spending over two weeks, reading, researching and absorbing any information related to Lane Smith, I felt somewhat compelled to share my journey in creating this wiki and glogster for this assignment. It would probably come as no surprise if I confessed that before beginning this review that I didn’t know a thing about Lane Smith. In fact, it wasn’t until I had read //It’s a Book// at our local bookstore, (and picked myself off the floor from laughing so hard) that I investigated the life of this insightful author. Needlessly to say, I was surprised to find out he was the illustrator that had worked with Jon Scieszka on so many books that I had been using in the classroom for years. (It made me realize how little I reflect on the illustrator of a book unless they are both author AND illustrator.)

I have been a huge fan of Jon Scieszka //and Lane Smith’s// books for a long time. I’ve used his //Math Curse// to have my students create math problems for a typical school day. I’ve read //Squids will be Squids// when doing a unit on fables. I’ve shared the poems in //Science Verse// at the beginning of the school year to introduce the concept of ‘What is Science?’. I’ve read //The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales// as a fun read aloud at the start of an English class about fairy tales, along with my personal favourite (and the book I chose to review), //The True Story of the Three Little Pigs!// In all my integration of these wonderful books, I never took the time to investigate the origin of the amazing illustrations that truly make these books so unique and unforgettable. My first step on my journey of “discovering Lane Smith” was to visit the local library and get my hands on as many of Smith’s books as possible, surprisingly we had seven of his books in our school library already (along with the Time Warp Trio of course). I spent several nights with my daughters reading through his books and soaking in their personal reactions to the books as we went along. We all loved the hilarious illustrations, funny antics and fun-loving friendship between //Cowboy and Octopus//. However not surprisingly, the girls’ personal favourite was //The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.// I’m not sure exactly why I chose this book for my review; perhaps it was our repeated readings of the book **or** my own experiences using it in the classroom **or** maybe it was because this book was truly the ‘breakthrough’ into the world of children’s literature for Lane Smith’s career. Looking at Smith’s illustrations as a whole, each book is unique but carries similarity in the style, texture and comical nature in which he portrays the characters. In creating my glogster of Lane Smith, I wanted to convey the same earthy colours, blurred edges, textural surface and even a bit of the comical flavour in my titles and graphics. As a whole, I’ve had a lot of fun learning about Lane Smith and have already placed several of his books on my next purchase order for my own school library. Can you guess who will be our next author/illustrator study this year?