Lucy Branam

Check out Lucy’s newest picture book, MONDAY,
out now from Sleeping Bear Press!

monday

Written by Lucy Branam, Illustrated by Kevin M. Barry

Poor Monday. Everyone knows he's the worst. Every other day of the week has something wonderful about them, even if Tuesday's best quality is that she's NOT Monday. So Monday tries his best to get people to like him, but Monday is just not cut out for Sunday's naps or Thursday's frantic energy. Finally, he decides to just not show up at all. But when the other days start looking more and more like Monday himself, Monday realizes that everyone has a job to do in a week.

You can use IndieBound to help you find a local bookshop to purchase Monday from, or you can purchase a copy through one of these links:

Roof Octopus

Written by Lucy Branam, Illustrated by Rogério Coelho

When Nora hears a soft "tap, tap, tap" at her bedroom window she never expects it to be the tentacle of a very large octopus, but that's exactly what it is--an octopus on her apartment building. The octopus turns out to be a very neighborly sort of octopus, helping the residents to wash their cars or weed the window boxes, and Nora makes fast friends with him. But one morning, the octopus is nowhere in sight. Has he moved on already? And just when Nora wanted to bring him for Show and Tell!

You can use IndieBound to help you find a local bookshop to purchase Roof Octopus from, or you can purchase a copy through one of these links:

“What could be more delightful than a huge and friendly octopus on the roof? That at least is the premise of Branam's debut which Coelho (Boat of Dreams, 2017) illuminates with views, usually canted or vertiginously angled, of a smiling, golden cephalopod hanging colorfully spotted tentacles down the sides of a city apartment building. Young Nora (brown-skinned like her parents and some of her neighbors and friends) is certainly wonderstruck when it taps on her bedroom window. Although the initial reactions of the grown-ups are a bit mixed (they all went on to work and school and tried not to make eye-contact with it), the way it lifts residents to their apartments, helps with small chores, and swings children back and forth soon wins everyone over. Her father's wonderful if seemingly witless suggestion that the genial giant might be making a migratory rest stop actually gains credence when it disappears after Nora murmurs something about bringing it to show-and-tell at school. But that Friday there's a tap...on her classroom window. Coelho's illustrations have the geometric look of Lane Smith's, higgledy-piggledy angles lending great energy to the proceedings. Even better than a crocodile in the bathtub.”

-Kirkus Reviews, 2018