Meet the illustrator Jonny Lambert

Over the last week I have been helping in a school library. We have been pulling together all the new books that were purchased for the collection over the last three months. One of these was Waiting for the Stars published in 2024. The story is sweet and it is sure to appeal to a preschool aged child especially with words like bottom and needing a wee. It could be a terrific story to read just before bedtime but what really struck me about this book was the illustrations. They are digital (I think) but they have a collage effect which is very appealing, but the best part is the way Jonny Lambert shows the light coming from the firefly.

Here is the blurb for Waiting for the Stars: Mouse is SO excited—for the first time ever, she gets to stay up past her bedtime and look at the stars with her friends. But phew! Staying awake is difficult! Can Mouse keep her little eyes open? And what happens when the clouds get in the way of the stars that Mouse has been waiting so patiently to see? Luckily, her best friend Firefly is there to save the day!

If you read Waiting for the Stars book try to also find What Stars are For which was one of my top books in 2024. I also talk about fireflies (we don't have them in Australia) in this post. 

I had not heard of Jonny Lambert so I went in search of his other books - here they are:

There are also five board books about Bear and Bird

Apart from the simple heartwarming stories and the collage-style illustrations I also recommend you look for books by Jonny Lambert in your local library because they contain terrific words - it is always wonderful to expose our youngest readers to rich language - think about these words which I discovered from his books:

beamed; warmth; bereft; deafening crash; scrumptious; sulked; delicious; oodles; gratefully; bursting with excitement; drooped; preened; and quivered

Here is the Instagram account for Jonny Lambert. I found this interview from 2016 on the blog Bookworm Baby - here is the introduction:

Jonny grew up in Surrey and always knew he wanted to be an artist of some sort. Encouraged by his art tutor at the Reigate School of Art and Design, Jonny is now an artist of many sorts: a talented illustrator with over 300 titles to his name, designer, paper engineer and most recently, Group Design Director at Templar Publishing. He lives with his wife, daughter and a menagerie of animals in West Sussex.