Lloyd, Megan 1958– (Megan Lloyd Thompson)

Personal

Born November 5, 1958, in Harrisburg, PA; daughter of Warren (a history teacher) and Lois (a kindergarten teacher) Lloyd; married Thomas Thompson (an antiques dealer). Education: Attended Pennsylvania State University, 1976-78; Parsons School of Design, B.F.A., 1981. Politics: "Independent." Religion: Presbyterian. Hobbies and other interests: Animals, painting, soapmaking, rug hooking, weaving.

Addresses

Home—Cumberland County, PA.

Career

Freelance illustrator of children's books, beginning 1982. Harper Junior Books, New York, NY, assistant to the art director, 1981-82; worked in restoration of American antique furniture, beginning 1983. Children's Literature Council of Pennsylvania, founding member and art director, 1985-96; Citizens for Responsible Development (local city planning-advocacy group), former president and founding member, 1986-87. Exhibitions: Work exhibited at Cumberland County Historical Society, Harrisburg, PA.

Awards, Honors

Colorado Children's Book Award runner-up, and Keystone to Reading award, both 1988, both for The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything; Keystone to Reading award, 1989, for More Surprises; Parents' Choice designation in picture-book category, 1991, for Cactus Hotel.

Writings

FOR CHILDREN; SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Chicken Tricks, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1983.

FOR CHILDREN; ILLUSTRATOR

Lee Bennett Hopkins, selector, Surprises (poetry), Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1984.

Ida Luttrell, Lonesome Lester, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1984.

Victoria Sherrow, There Goes the Ghost, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1985.

Norma Farber, All Those Mothers at the Manger, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1985.

Thom Roberts, The Atlantic Free Balloon Race, Avon (New York, NY), 1986.

Tony Johnston, Farmer Mack Measures His Pig, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1986.

Linda Williams, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, Crowell (New York, NY), 1986.

Lee Bennett Hopkins, selector, More Surprises (poetry), Harper (New York, NY), 1987.

Nancy MacArthur, Megan Gets a Dollhouse, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1988.

Carolyn Otto, That Sky, That Rain, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1990.

Patricia Lauber, How We Learned the Earth Is Round, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1990.

Brenda Z. Guiberson, Cactus Hotel, Holt (New York, NY), 1991.

Jane O'Connor and Robert O'Connor, Super Cluck, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991.

Eric Kimmel, Baba Yaga: A Russian Folktale, Holiday House (New York, NY), 1991.

Paul Showers, How You Talk, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.

Brenda Z. Guiberson, Spoonbill Swamp, Holt (New York, NY), 1992.

Melvin Berger, Look Out for Turtles!, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.

Mary Neville, The Christmas Tree Ride, Holiday House (New York, NY), 1992.

Brenda Z. Guiberson, Lobster Boat, Holt (New York, NY), 1993.

Eric Kimmel, The Gingerbread Man, Holiday House (New York, NY), 1993.

Susan Tews, The Gingerbread Doll, Clarion (New York, NY), 1993.

Tom Birdseye, A Regular Flood of Mishap, Holiday House (New York, NY), 1994.

Ellen Kindt McKenzie, The Perfectly Orderly House, Holt (New York, NY), 1994.

Brenda Z. Guiberson, Winter Wheat, Holt (New York, NY), 1995.

Barbara Juster Esbensen, Dance with Me (poetry), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.

Carolyn Otto, What Color Is Camouflage?, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

Priscilla Belz Jenkins, Falcons Nest on Skyscrapers, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

Linda White, Too Many Pumpkins, Holiday House (New York, NY), 1996.

Melvin Berger, Chirping Crickets, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1998.

Eric A. Kimmel, Seven at One Blow: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm, Holiday House (New York, NY), 1998.

Carolyn Otto, Pioneer Church, Holt (New York, NY), 1999.

Linda Williams, Horse in the Pigpen, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

Esther Hershenhorn, Fancy That, Holiday House (New York, NY), 2003.

Eileen Spinelli, Thanksgiving at the Tappletons', HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.

Franklyn M. Branley, Earthquakes, new edition, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.

Pamela Duncan Edwards, The Mixed-up Rooster, Katherine Tegen Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Bobbi Miller, reteller, Davy Gets Hitched, Holiday House (New York, NY), 2007.

Franklyn M. Branley, Volcanoes, new edition, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2007.

Diane Shore, This Is the Feast, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2008.

Sidelights

Working from her home in rural Pennsylvania, Megan Lloyd is an illustrator whose love of nature comes through in each of her detailed paintings. Many of her illustration projects, such as Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson, Earthquakes by Franklyn M. Branley, and Falcons Nest on Skyscrapers by Priscilla Belz Jenkins, bring to life elements of the natural world, while in The Mixed-up Rooster by Pamela Duncan Edwards and Horse in the Pigpen by Linda Williams Lloyd captures the humor of simple stories for pre readers. Lloyd, who has up to six illustration projects in the works at any one time, is diligent about research, and her images are all painted from staged scenes in which costume and lighting are considered. In fact, her husband, Thomas Thompson, is often recruited to model for the male characters in her illustrations.

Lighthearted stories for young children are given a dash of warmhearted humor through Lloyd's artwork. In her work for The Mixed-up Rooster, her "bright, neon-colored pictures" contain "comic details that illustrate the verbal puns," according to Booklist contributor Hazel Rochman. Bringing to life Duncan's story about a rooster with bad timing, Lloyd's "vibrant illustrations … are full of personality and charm," Linda L. Walkins concluded in School Library Journal. Noting of her work for Esther Hershenhorn's Fancy That that "Lloyd has mastered the egg tempera medium," a Publishers Weekly contributor added that the artist's "work alternates between the checkerboard orchards and tranquil cattle of American folk art and a more comical style" that suits the historical tale. While the repetitive rhyming text in the rollicking Horse in the Pigpen "make this an enjoyable readaloud," a Kirkus Reviews writer concluded that Lloyd's "cleverly detailed and often outlandish illustrations" conjure up "a visual treat."

For her nonfiction titles, Lloyd travels where the story requires, knowing that every setting has unique characteristics that can only be understood through personal experience. A paint-restoration project on the pulpit of an historic Pennsylvania church allowed Lloyd to create

particularly distinctive artwork for Carolyn Otto's Pioneer Church, a quasi-fictional story that follows the history of a house of worship build during the colonial era. "The blend of precise, almost primitive-style illustration with the fluid text is seamless," noted Booklist critic Shelley Townsend-Hudson, the critic dubbing Pioneer Church "exceptional." To create the paintings she contributes to Cactus Hotel, Lloyd traveled to the Saguaro National Monument in the desert near Tucson, Arizona, producing what a Publishers Weekly contributor described as "pastel-shaded … and finely rendered scenes of native flora and fauna." Her work on Guiberson's Lobster Boat found the artist in Maine, spending time on a lobster boat, while another collaboration with the author, Winter Wheat, inspired an even longer trip. "I drove clear across the country to photograph the wheat farm belonging to the author's father and mother!," Lloyd once explained to SATA of her work on the book, which focuses on a wheat grower in the Pacific Northwest. "If I can't see what it is I am to draw, I simply can't make successful illustrations." Praising Lloyd's work for Winter Wheat, Booklist contributor Julie Corsaro wrote that the illustrator's "sweeping" images of wheat country "are appealing in their use of rich colors and textures."

"I was born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania," Lloyd once told SATA, "growing up with my parents, one older sister, a cat, and a dog. Both my sister and I began taking ballet lessons when we were young, but my sister did not show any great love for that particular art form and stopped dancing shortly thereafter. I fell in love with ballet and pursued it with all that I had. For many years I was convinced that it would be my career—so convinced that I didn't really give a great deal of thought to anything else. Because ballet was ‘my thing,’ I wasn't allowed to take horse riding lessons when my sister and mother did, mainly because my sister fell off a horse and broke her arm while my mother fell off and broke her knee. Surely this was too risky a sport for an aspiring dancer!

"At fifteen the terrible blow fell. I discovered that there were practically NO five-foot-one-inch dancers with short legs, no matter how good they were at jumping and stretching and pirouetting. I was crushed. In my despair—and it truly felt like the world was crumbling—I decided that I would transfer my creative efforts to the visual arts, and I began to think of myself as an ‘artist.’ Fortunately, the high school I attended had an excellent art department with very talented and supportive teachers. Things seemed to run smoothly until it was time for the big college decision."

At first Lloyd "fell in love" with the idea of attending Harvard Law School and, with that goal in mind, she enrolled in the pre-law program at Pennsylvania State University. "That lasted for all of two semesters at which time I felt miserable, missed my art work, and was totally confused," she later recalled. "My mother, understanding my confusion, suggested that I might like to illustrate picture books. And to sweeten the suggestion, she showed me a copy of Brian Wildsmith's book Circus. That was all it took. I had never seen a book like that before. It was wonderful."

Transferring to Parsons School of Design, she studied illustration, earning her degree in 1981. Even as a published illustrator, Lloyd finds her education as an artist ongoing. "I continue to work and work and work at learning, growing, and developing," she explained. "The more I learn about illustrating books, the more I discover all that I don't know! That's great—it keeps illustrating a stimulating career. Each book presents a new puzzle to solve. Who could ask for more?

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1994, Kay Weisman, review of A Regular Flood of Mishap, p. 1369; December 1, 1994, Lauren Peterson, review of The Perfectly Orderly House, p. 687; November 15, 1995, Julie Corsaro, review of Winter Wheat, p. 562; August, 1996, Carolyn Phelan, review of Falcons Nest on Skyscrapers, p. 1902; November 1, 1996, Hazel Rochman, review of

What Color Is Camouflage?, p. 504; November 15, 1998, Hazel Rochman, review of Seven at One Blow: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm, p. 593; October 1, 1999, Shelley Townsend-Hudson, review of Pioneer Church, p. 374; July, 2002, Cynthia Turnquest, review of Horse in the Pigpen, p. 1861; September 15, 2003, Gillian Engberg, review of Fancy That, p. 245; July 1, 2006, Hazel Rochman, review of The Mixed-up Rooster, p. 64.

Horn Book, January, 1999, review of Seven at One Blow, p. 74.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2002, review of Horse in the Pigpen, p. 348; September 1, 2003, review of Fancy That, p. 1124; July 15, 2006, review of The Mixed-up Rooster, p. 721.

Publishers Weekly, March 15, 19991, review of Super Cluck, p. 58; June 7, 1991, review of Cactus Hotel, p. 64; April 19, 1993, review of Lobster Boat, p. 60; September 20, 1993, review of The Gingerbread Doll, p. 40; December 20, 1993, review of A Regular Flood of Mishap, p. 71; October 31, 1994, review of The Perfectly Orderly House, p. 61; November 16, 1998, review of Seven at One Blow, p. 74; March 18, 2002, review of Horse in the Pigpen, p. 101; September 22, 2003, review of Fancy That, p. 104.

School Library Journal, June, 2002, Hannah Hoppe, review of Horse in the Pigpen, p. 116; November, 2003, Beth Tegart, review of Fancy That, p. 96; August, 2006, Linda L. Walkins, review of The Mixed-up Rooster, p. 81.