2023
Stickler from A Gift for Nana gets its own book.
—Lane
A JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD selection
A KIRKUS Best Picture Book of the Year
BLUEBERRY HONOR AWARD 2023
AMAZON Best Books of the Year, 2023
A PEOPLE Magazine Best Book
BOSTON GLOBE 2023 Gift Book Round Up
EVANSTON Public Library 101 Great Books for Kids List
Signed copies of Stickler Loves the World (with original colored pencil doodle inside) are available at the amazing independent book shop, The Hickory Stick in Washington Depot, CT (860)868-0525
Interviews about Stickler
The Illustrator Who Revolutionized Children’s Publishing is Doing It Again - Fast Company
Lane Smith Sticks to a Natural Theme -The Daily Heller
Too Fantastical: A Look at Lane Smith’s Imaginary Creatures - Orion
Lane Smith Is Still Thinking Like a Kid - Mahnaz Dar
What Matters to Lane Smith - Debbie Millman
WATCH Doug Salati and Lane talk Hot Dogs and Sticklers at the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival
LISTEN to Lane chat with Travis Jonker on THE YARN podcast
LISTEN to Nick Patton talk Stickler at PictureBooking.
★ STARRED
Here Smith has joined the oddball goofiness of his earlier books with the heart and soul of his more recent stories, and the result is a book as physically beautiful as it is moving.
“Friendship! Happiness! World peace! Maple syrup!” A buoyant, bristly ode to joy.
Kirkus Reviews
★ STARRED
Smith, through Stickler, does the planet proud: elaborately textured oil paint, gesso, and cold wax spreads make sunbeams feel warmly welcoming, huge stones look poetically weather-beaten (“Behold! The joy of ROCKS”), and helicopter seed pods seem like a revelation (“Then there are THESE THINGS dancing for us”). The visitor is eventually revealed to be Stickler’s pal Crow, who seems genuinely transformed by Stickler’s openhearted joie de vivre— “You really did open my eyes.” Centering irrepressible joy that’s a force of nature itself, the work lovingly portrays an “amazing... weird... wonderful” world that’s worth experiencing anew.
Publishers Weekly
★ STARRED
A delightful book intended to encourage readers to appreciate the simple beauty of everyday things, this selection would make a great addition to a picture book collection.
School Library Journal
The illustrator who revolutionized children’s publishing is doing it again…the one thing that has changed: the tone of his stories, shaped here by a culture he played a critical role in creating.
“It’s funny, after all these years now, I go into a children’s bookstore, and it’s just this embarrassment of riches of beautiful, strange, wonderful artworks, and everyone’s cheeky, and the texts are all a little subversive. So now, it’s kind of a punk thing to do a little more sincere stuff. Even though Stickler is a weird-looking guy, his message is very sweet and sentimental. And that seems almost revolutionary to me now.”
In deferring to the strange, haunting aesthetic of his past but shifting the tone, Smith has yet again wound up with something wholly unique—and if history offers any precedent, influential.
As someone who grew up on Smith’s early books, I assumed that, as an adult, my capacity for getting lost in his richly illustrated worlds had likely expired. I am delighted to be wrong.
The message here is not just to find the beauty in the world but to relish in its absolute weirdness and wondrous possibilities.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
Language and text size and placement are skillfully employed throughout, both through Leach's expressive design and Smith's quippy humor… Smith continues to explore big ideas through oddball characters.
The Horn Book
It would take a very advanced calculator to tally up the hours my children have spent absorbed in the work of Lane Smith, whose smudgecore aesthetic defies the idea that an image can ever be fully appreciated the first time you see it. The compounding layers and layers create an aliveness that pulls you close in the manner of the leaves and branches which inspire him. There is an awe to the intricacy of it all, which happens to be the subject of his latest book, Stickler Loves the World.
A sweet ode to life’s small joys.
People Magazine
It turns out Stickler, with his delight in the bits and bobs around him, is not unlike my 2-year-old. Reading this book felt like seeing the world through his eyes, where every pine cone, rock, and leaf is a treasure to behold.
Husna Haq, Christian Science Monitor
Giraffes, cats, and penguins? Sure! But leave it to prolific and often quirky author-illustrator Smith (the Animal Problems series) to elevate an exultant, eight-eyed tangle of sticks to star-quality status.
Booklist
