Holiday Gift Guide!

Books make the best gifts! They are easy to wrap, to mail, and bring laughter and joy to others during the holiday season. Who is on your gift list? A teacher? A new parent? A beginning reader? A teen who devours graphic novels? Check out our recommendations below highlighting new releases and old favorites that inspire joyful reading.

How do you decide what’s logical in a picture book world filled with talking animals and vehicles made out of fruit? Below, Art Director Danielle Carnito shares some snippets of hilarious art and details some of the wackiest questions that arose during the creation of Monkey with a Tool Belt and the Craftiest Christmas Ever by Chris Monroe!

By Megan Ciskowski, Associate Publicist

Check out September new releases from Lerner Publishing Group!

by Carol Hinz, Editorial Director of Millbrook Press and Carolrhoda Books

The original Monkey with a Tool Belt book by Chris Monroe came out in 2008, and I don’t think anyone who worked on that first book ever dreamed that twelve years later, we’d be on book #6 in the series and that there would be a show streaming on Netflix!

I certainly never dreamed that in the year 2020, I’d be the mother of a seven-year-old kid who thinks Chico Bon Bon is awesome–or that I’d have the great fortune to work with Chris Monroe as the editor of her newest book, Monkey with a Tool Belt Blasts Off! I thought it would be fun to interview my son and get some of his thoughts on both the new book and the show, so here we go…