Cover Reveal: “A Kid of Their Own” Offers “Twice the Dads and Twice the Dad Jokes”

I’m very excited to be bringing you the official, full-cover reveal of A Kid of Their Own, by Megan Dowd Lambert, her second picture book about a group of barnyard friends and the two farmers—a gay couple—who care for them. Lambert also shares with Mombian readers a little about her motivations, the importance of language when talking about adoptive families, and why her fictional world includes both anthropomorphic animals and humans.

A Kid of Their Own, illustrated by Jessica Lanan (Charlesbridge), is the sequel to Lambert’s charming 2016 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor Book, A Crow of His Own (illustrated by David Hyde Costello). In the new tale, Clyde the rooster has trouble adjusting to the arrival of nanny goat Fran and her kid, Rowdy. “Even though Clyde had a beak, his nose was out of joint,” the story tells us, since Clyde regards Rowdy as competition for “motherly goose” Roberta’s attention. Through Lanan’s illustrations, we also learn that Farmer Kevin and Farmer Jay are adopting “a kid of their own.” In the closing illustration, we see Little Riley, the farmers’ new child, held in one dad’s arms and surrounded by the rest of the farm community.

I love the interwoven stories of the farm animals and the farmers—conveying one only via illustrations makes the book richer without over-complicating the text. Lambert also explained to me:

While I’m sure part of the reason I created this world in which animals and people live and work together as quasi-peers can be directly traced to my 1970s childhood affection for “The Muppet Show” and “Sesame Street,” I wanted to juxtapose queer humans with animal characters to overtly point out that there’s a difference! A lot of children’s books that are read as queer texts feature anthropomorphic animals and objects as stand-ins for queer people; there are penguins, and worms, and crayons, and bears coded as queer, and just plain not enough humans. Although I like many of those books very much, the reluctance to center queer people in children’s books suggests to me a calculated distancing of queer content from readers on the part of the market.

Another lovely thing about both books is that the farmers’ relationship is obvious, but the fact that it is a same-sex relationship is incidental. “When I wrote my text for A Crow of His Own, I knew I wanted Farmer Kevin and Farmer Jay to be clearly read as a gay couple, and I suggested that David could use illustrations to convey their relationship and this part of their identity however he saw fit,” Lambert said. “David depicts their relationship through their interactions with each other: in one picture they are cast in silhouette, cuddled up on the couch watching TV, and in two other scenes Farmer Kevin’s arm is around Farmer Jay’s shoulder. In A Kid of Their Own, Jessica Lanan depicts them with similarly affectionate interactions, and she also slapped a rainbow sticker on the back of the pick-up truck.”

Lambert’s use of the phrase “a kid of their own” was intentional and drawn from her own experience. An adoptive mom who identifies as bisexual, she shared:

Sometimes when people find out I’ve adopted children, they ask “Do you have any kids of your own?” I reject that phrasing as careless since it risks diminishing the sense of belonging that adoptees need and deserve to feel in their families. All of my children are “my own”—the four who came home to us through adoption, and the three who were born to me. But, in claiming my adopted children as “my own,” and in naming Farmer Kevin and Farmer Jay’s child, Riley, as “a kid of their own,” I don’t wish to erase the importance of first families (or biological or birth families) in adoptees’ lives and identities. First and foremost, children are their own people, each with the right to their own histories and stories.

Her picture book Real Sisters Pretend, illustrated by Nicole Tadgell (Tilbury House, 2016) also focuses on an adoptive family, giving us the story of two sisters (with two moms) exuberantly playing pretend, as they reaffirm that their sisterhood is not pretend.

Lambert is a consummate storyteller who has spent much time studying and thinking about the process of storytelling. She is a senior lecturer in children’s literature at Simmons College and has served on the 2009 Geisel, 2011 Caldecott, and the 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Committees. In her book for adults, Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking about What They See (Charlesbridge 2015), she explains the interactive Whole Book Approach that she developed during her graduate work at Simmons, in conjunction with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. That may sound rather academic, but she brings her skills to bear in a way that always keeps her young audience in mind. While A Kid of Their Own offers messages about adoption, belonging, and community, there’s also gentle humor throughout that will make it a fun read for both children and adults. Lambert said, “I wrote the kind of text my eldest son, Rory (now 22) in particular, loved to read as a child. There’s lots of wordplay, and many puns—‘twice the dads and twice the dad jokes,’ is a tagline I’ve only half-joked about using to describe this book.” Lanan’s illustrations also offer lots of engaging details as well as adorably expressive animals.

A Kid of Their Own will be published on February 11, 2020, but you can pre-order it now. While you’re waiting for it to arrive, follow Lambert on Twitter @MDowdLambert or visit her website, and also visit illustrator Jessica Lanan’s website for a peek at her artistic process.

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