Jane Dyer


Jane Dyer is an American author and illustrator of more than fifty books, including Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Cookies series and Jeanne Birdsall's Lucky and Squash.

Background

Dyer grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. She used to teach, write, and illustrate textbooks before she began illustrating children's books full-time. She was encouraged to begin illustrating by her students and their parents. She says she draws inspiration from the books of her childhood and the clothes her mother preserved from her own childhood, which Dyer liked to dress up in as a young girl.
Most of Dyer's work in children books illustrates family or home scenes. Dyer is a twin and often illustrates books with her daughter, Brooke Dyer. Dyer has a Tibetan Terrier named Scuppers.
In 2015, Dyer spoke at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts and read Lucky and Squash aloud as part of her talk on the art-making process for picture books.

Works

  • Time for Bed, illustrator
  • All We Know, illustrator
  • The House That's Your Home, illustrator
  • There's A Train Out for Dreamland, co-illustrator
  • Every Year on Your Birthday, illustrator
  • Hurry! Hurry! Have You Heard?, illustrator
  • Wee Rhymes, illustrator
  • Lucky and Squash, illustrator
  • Santa Claus and the Three Bears, co-illustrated with Brooke Dyer
  • Cookies: Bite-Size Lessons, illustrator
  • Christmas Cookies: Bite-Size Holiday Lessons, illustrator
  • One Smart Cookie: Bite-Size Lessons for the School Years and Beyond, co-illustrated with Brooke Dyer
  • Move Over, Rover!
  • Goodnight Goodnight Sleepyhead, illustrator
  • Whose Garden Is It?, illustrator
  • I Love You Like Crazy Cakes, illustrator
  • A Woman For President: The Story of Victoria Woodhull, illustrator
  • Oh My Baby, Little One, illustrator
  • Cinderella's Dress, illustrator
  • Babies on the Go, illustrator
  • Good Morning, Sweeite Pie, and other Poems for Little Children, author and illustrator
  • Little Brown Bear Won't Take a Nap!, author and illustrator
  • Little Brown Bear Won't Go to School!, author and illustrator
  • Little Brown Bear and the Bundle of Joy, author and illustrator
  • Sophie's Masterpiece: A Spider's Tale, illustrator
  • Blue Moon Soup: A Family Cookbook, illustrator
  • When Mama Comes Home Tonight, illustrator
  • Child of Faerie, Child of Earth, illustrator
  • Animal Crackers: A Delectable Collection of Pictures, Poems, and Lullabies for the Very Young, author
  • Cracked Corn and Snow Ice Cream: A Family Almanac, illustrator
  • The Snow Speaks, illustrator
  • If Anything Ever Goes Wrong at the Zoo, illustrator
  • The Random House Book of Bedtime Stories, illustrator
  • Talking Like the Rain: A Read-To-Me Book of Poems, illustrator
  • The Girl in the Golden Bower, illustrator
  • Piggins, illustrator
  • Picnic With Piggins, illustrator
  • Piggins and the Royal Wedding, illustrator

    Reception of works

Dyer has received multiple awards throughout her career, including two Parent's Choice Honor Books for Illustration awards. In a School Library Journal review of Lucky and Squash, Anne Beier of the Hendrick Hudson Free Library in Montrose, New York, praises Dyer's illustrations and states that Dyer's paintings of the titular dogs' faces are priceless, particularly in the scenes where they are looking at each other through the fence and those where they are in their owners' arms. Similarly, a Kirkus Reviews article calls the illustrations in this book charming and writes that they "have all the clever details that are Dyer's signature touch". Connie Fletcher of Booklist suggests that, apart from the "ominous grays and greens" in the illustrations of one scene, the pastel-colored illustrations in the book are evocative of 1940s picture postcards, which she considers "just right for such jolly capers".