I’m thrilled to share cover art by Mia Saine for my forthcoming essay collection Book Bonding: Building Connections Through Family Reading, debuting April 18, 2023 with Imagine Publishing, an imprint of Charlesbridge. Here and throughout the book, Mia’s warm, bighearted illustrations perfectly capture the cozy feeling I hope readers will experience as they dip into the twenty-one essays I’ve collected and revised. Loosely arranged around themes of parenting, adoption, race, and healing, most of the pieces are adapted from ones I first published at the Horn Book, while others originated at EmbraceRace and the Reading While White site. The eldest of my seven children wrote the afterword, and in his foreword, Horn Book Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton writes,

For Megan — and I wish for all parents — reading is emphatically a shared journey. She doesn’t read to her children so much as she reads with them. (Although as a solitary sort, I appreciate that she gives her kids plenty of space for their own private reading.) Why read with children? There are so many reasons, but the one at the heart of this book is that “books offer a consistent means of connecting with my kids, even when (or perhaps especially when) other means fail us.”

I hope readers will be inspired to think about all the ways that books help them bond with others, and you can find out more at my website megandowdlambert.com.