Jane Dyer


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

Works

Dyer has received multiple awards throughout her career, including two Parent's Choice Honor Books for Illustration awards. 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. 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".