Rural Library Conference
KEYNOTE: THE WHOLE BOOK APPROACH IN 2025
Authors Megan Dowd Lambert and Breanna McDaniel return to CLiF for an online program applying Lambert’s Whole Book Approach to favorite titles published in 2025. Drawing on the expanded 10th anniversary edition of Lambert’s book Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking About What They See, they will offer tips and tools for storytimes and for book talks to inspire readers of all ages.
Megan Dowd Lambert
Megan is the creator of The Whole Book Approach storytime model, which she developed in association with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. After working as an educator at The Carle for over a decade, she held contract faculty appointments in Children’s Literature at Simmons University until 2020.
She won an Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor for her first picture book, A Crow of His Own, illustrated by David Hyde Costello (Charlesbridge 2015), and is the author of many other children’s books, including the Every Day with April & Mae early reader series, illustrated by Briana Dengoue and Gisela Bohórquez (Charlesbridge 2022, 2023).
Megan’s books for adults include Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking About What They See (Charlesbridge 2015); Book Bonding: Building Connections Through Family Reading, illustrated by Mia Saine (Charlesbridge 2023); and Read It Again: 70 Whole Book Approach Plans to Help You Shake Up Storytime (White Poppy Press, 2023).
The mother of seven children, Megan grew up in Vermont and now lives with her family in Western Massachusetts.
Readers can find her online at megandowdlambert.com and modernmemoirs.com.
Dr. Breanna J. McDaniel
(she/her/hers)
Breanna is an emerging creative and recovering scholar. She’s published in myriad academic journals, an academic anthology, and her debut picture book Hands Up! was published with Dial Books in 2019. She is also the author of other picture books, including Atlanta, My Home and Impossible Moon which was published with Denene Millner Books/Simon and Schuster.
Her newest book Go Forth and Tell: The Life of August Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller, was published February 6, 2024, and has received the 2025 Ezra Jack Keats Writer Award and the 2025 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor. Her fifth picture book, Cute Toot, was published in April 2024. She also has two more picture books with Henry Holt Books for Young Readers at Macmillan.
Breanna is the co-founder of REIYL and completed her PhD at a university in the UK and looked at surveillance in representations of Black children as food. As an activist, she is engaged in thinking through access to different types of literacy for families from the Global Majority. She’s adamant about promoting the work and connections of children’s book creators from those communities too.
Readers can find her online at breannajmcdaniel.com
