(2) PS Illustrated by Lane Smith. A young brown-skinned boy, cozy in bed, smiles up at his female caretaker. The imaginative story--told in soothing, rhyming text--proceeds with the many possibilities a day could hold, from the mundane to the playful (encountering a squirrel...named Stu) to the fantastical. The stylized mixed-media illustrations' bright colors and energetic, angular lines capture the boy's city neighborhood and its hypothetical goings-on.

Reviewer: Julie Danielson | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2019

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. "Deep in the woods / is a house / just a house / that once was / but now isn't / a home." So begins (and later concludes) Fogliano's poetic, read-aloud-perfect tale of a mysterious abandoned house discovered by two children. Items left inside spark their imaginations about the ramshackle structure’s past occupants. Smith effectively uses different but complementary mixed-media illustration styles to distinguish present-day scenes from imagined ones.

Reviewer: Cynthia K. Ritter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2018

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. This companion to Penguin Problems stars Edward the Giraffe, who, as revealed in fidgety, conversational first-person text, is self-conscious about his too-long neck. Then downhearted Edward meets lonely turtle Cyrus; retrieving a banana from a tree for Cyrus changes Edward's perspective about his neck. Panels divide images during moments of conversation and contemplation, allowing characters' emotions and reactions to take center stage in the textured, muted illustrations.

Reviewer: Elisa Gall | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2018

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. Harris's impressive debut--containing over one hundred poems, riddles, visual jokes, and nonsense--offers surprising detours and a dazzling variety of forms and subjects, which will keep readers engaged and on their toes. Smith's stylishly silly mixed-media illustrations raise the irreverence to sublime levels. Occasional bickering between poet and illustrator adds another layer of absurdity. This collection rewards repeat visits.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2017

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. The snark level is high in this collaboration between funnymen John and Smith. Penguin wakes up and immediately begins to complain. When he loses his cool ("I have so many problems! And nobody even cares!"), an eloquent walrus offers wise advice. Penguin is at times wonderfully expressive, at others hilariously deadpan; his words, rendered in orange type, vary in size based on his presumed volume.

Reviewer: Sam Bloom | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2016

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. The Toad brothers have run amok through Drywater Gulch. Enter Sheriff Ryan. In a clever bit of reverse psychology, young Ryan snubs the Toad brothers by blaming the town's problems on a band of dinosaur hooligans. Smith's over-the-top goofy townspeople are a perfect partner for Shea's stylistic shenanigans; alongside the silliness Smith shows some serious skills with line work and hue.

Reviewer: Sam Bloom | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2014

(2) 1-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. Self-absorbed Lulu's (Lulu and the Brontosaurus) arguing skills have matured to wheedling. Still, Mom and Dad won't pay for something (that's not divulged until book's end), so Lulu earns money by dog-walking. This extended comic fable is rife with authorial intrusion and funny asides. Smith's pencil illustrations are in fine form, especially the caricatures of canines and their resembling owners.

Reviewer: Joanna Rudge Long | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2012

(2) 1-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. Spoiled Lulu seeks a pet brontosaurus; she finds one who, to her shock, wants to make Lulu his pet. Fleeing the dinosaur, Lulu learns compassion and manners. The third-person narrator's voice is sassy, and multiple endings add goofiness to the already entertaining story. Smith's almost-pointillist black-and-white illustrations are vivacious and expressive, depicting as clearly as the text does Lulu's bratty-turned-polite personality.

Reviewer: Katrina Hedeen | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2010

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. In this frothy book, a princess takes flight if not weighed down. One day she accidentally floats up into the sky--then happily determines to head skyward every day. Heide's voice is confident and sure, using direct address to great effect. Smith's mixed-media illustrations, understated yet witty, communicate the ennui of the princess's encumbered existence and her stratospheric delight in her newfound freedom.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2009

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. A boy's dreams include becoming president and rocketing to the moon--big plans for a kid who has been plotting all this from his classroom's punishment corner. Though some of the boy's outsize ambitions and dialogue sound more adult than childlike, others are especially hilarious because the illustrations show how physically diminutive he is (mammoth ego notwithstanding).

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. There's a new twosome in town--a cowpoke and a cephalopod. Scieszka and Smith cast their unlikely duo in seven vignettes that reveal the ins and outs of friendship. All are simply told, surprisingly fresh, and genuinely funny--with Smith's artfully weathered mixed-media orchestrations pushing the humor level up and up and up. (Octopus dressed as the tooth fairy for Halloween is flat-out hilarious.)

Reviewer: Tanya D. Auger | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2007

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. A boy waiting for a friend in Manhattan asks a passerby, "Have you seen Art?" She assumes he means the newly renovated Museum of Modern Art and sends him there. The book's extra-wide pages become museum walls featuring crisply reproduced masterworks by Picasso, Warhol, etc., which the sketchlike boy drinks in. An endnote details the pieces pictured.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(1) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. A teacher's comment ("if you listen closely enough, you can hear the poetry of science in everything") causes a boy to "start hearing everything as a science poem." Scieszka's clever verses, lampooning works by Edgar Allan Poe and others, and Smith's characteristically zany illustrations relate simple scientific concepts about topics such as precipitation and atoms. A CD of Scieszka and Smith reading the verses is included.

Reviewer: Peter D. Sieruta | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2004

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. This "director's cut" of Merriam and Smith's acclaimed Halloween ABC spruces up the original design, enhancing the color and magnifying the art, while leaving Merriam's shivery poems intact. A new afterword gives an interesting behind-the-scenes account of both versions' creation and shows readers illustrations Smith changed in the first book--e.g., "V for Vampire" became "V for Viper"--to fit Merriam's poems.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1987

(1) 1-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. A new dust jacket features a full-page headshot of the Stinky Man himself on the front and a smooth sales pitch from Jack on the back. Libraries will be disappointed to miss out on the double-sided jacket, the inside of which contains the Long-Lost Fairly Stupid Tale "The Boy Who Cried Cow Patty" along with some obligatory squawking from the Little Red Hen about this "Special Ten Year Anniversary Edition."

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1992

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. Telling an exciting tale, a space alien sounds like Dr. Seuss ("I jammed the razzo controls with my zimulis"), but an afterword explains that his story, transmitted through space, was decoded and found to be "written in a combination of many different Earth languages." The words are defined at the back, but the meanings are clear from both context and illustrations in a book that will spark discussion about language.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2001

(3) 4-6 Time Warp Trio series. Illustrated by Lane Smith. The Larry, Moe, and Curly of time travel are back, this time getting themselves stuck in their own irreverent play about Greek mythology. Fans of other books in the series will find much to chuckle over, such as the one-liners traded by Hera, insult queen of Mount Olympus, and Sam. Included are a cast list of all the gods and goddesses and tongue-in-cheek instructions for making props.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Lane Smith. This tenth anniversary edition of A. Wolf's exposé of the three little pigs includes an introduction by the imprisoned wolf himself, still claiming his innocence and professing to be a model prisoner (with no knowledge of how that saw got in the cake his granny sent him).

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc. | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 1990

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Lane Smith. Designed by Molly Leach. Squids will be . . . kids in this goofy collection of "fables" that seem more like verbatim tales from the fifth grade, here populated by Grasshopper, Frog, Elephant, and Skunk, not to mention Rock, Paper, Scissors, Piece of Toast, and BeefSnakStikTM. The humor is definitely juvenile and wears a little thin, but Scieszka has perfect pitch when it comes to this kind of thing, and Smith's portraits find the humanity behind the masks.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1998

(3) 4-6 Time Warp Trio series. Illustrated by Lane Smith. In another installment in the popular series, literary mayhem ensues when the boys are transported into a jumbled gathering of all the characters from the books on their school's summer reading list. Like they did in The Stinky Cheese Man, Scieszka and Smith poke fun at literary conventions as they spin a clever scenario of what might happen if Frog and Toad, Long John Silver, Ramona, and other children's fiction notables ended up on the same page.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann