Lane Smith likes to do things differently. Though many recent picture books have explored the importance of appreciating everyday joys, far fewer have featured protagonists as bizarre—or endearing—as the eight-eyed, pointy-toothed, big-nosed star of Smith’s newest work, Stickler Loves the World (Random House Studio, Aug. 22). “Traditionally, in a kid’s book, if you had that sort of message, it would probably be…told by a cute kitten or a teddy bear with a rainbow behind it,” he tells Kirkus in a Zoom interview from his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut. “I guess I have a bit of an aversion to pure rainbows and sparkles.”

Unusual though Stickler may be, the little creature, a species of unknown origin who first appeared in Smith’s A Gift for Nana (2022), has a pure zest for life. After encountering what appears to be an alien (but is, in fact, Stickler’s friend Crow, who’s gotten a can stuck over his head), our protagonist decides to show its new pal everything that makes the planet “so amazing, so weird, so wonderful,” from the morning sun to flowers, waves, and wind. Along the way, Stickler teaches Crow and readers to see the beauty in the quotidian. “There’s no irony to this character,” says Smith. “It’s just pure joy and pure love for everything.”

Jarring and offbeat imagery has long been a hallmark of Smith’s work, but so have earnest, tender stories. Smith sees Stickler as the perfect melding of both styles. “I was feeling a little more nostalgic for some of my older books that were painted in oils and were a little darker…something like The Stinky Cheese Man,” he says. He also drew on techniques he developed during the pandemic, when he began doing large-scale paintings. “I did a lot of experimentation with different mediums like cold wax.” He adds, “I would go outside and get little pebbles and dirt and would mix that in with the paint.”

It was a liberating experience: “There was absolutely no pressure. I didn’t have to show the paintings to anyone; I didn’t have to sell them; I didn’t have to do anything. And then, when it came time to do Stickler, just through osmosis, those techniques found their way into the book.” Smith encourages readers to closely examine his artwork: “If you look at some of the paintings, like the spread with the rocks, you can see little rocks in the paint,” he says.

Smith notes that his wife, designer Molly Leach, has an enormous—though often unseen—impact on his books. On one of his favorite spreads in Stickler, the protagonist waxes rhapsodic about the beauty of the wind. Several words of the text appear to blow about on the page—one of Leach’s many contributions. Over the years, she’s helped to perfect his work. “A lot of times, I’ll have an idea about how I think the type would work best, either to express the humor or to nail a word. Like, I’ll say, ‘Well, this word should be really big.’ And every time she’ll say no. She always then does her own thing. You would think I would learn after we’ve been together for 37 years.”

Leach also reined in Smith and frequent collaborator Jon Scieszka on their early work. “We both had ideas based on the type. But it all had to do with gags, like, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be funny if the type is all bouncy here?’ and ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if it’s melting off the page here?’ And she rejected most of that.” Leach gave their work “a structure and a framework,” says Smith. “She’s almost like an editor, in a way, on all my books. She doesn’t get a lot of credit. Most people, including most of my family, never even know what a designer does.”

In the more than three decades since Smith first started writing and illustrating children’s books, he’s seen the landscape change radically. His art—notably his gorgeously grotesque illustrations for Scieszka’s satirical works The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs (1989) and The Stinky Cheese Man (1992)—stood out at a time when picture books generally favored a more realistic style. “It seemed like most of the books out there were fairly straightforward and earnest,” Smith says. He and Scieszka felt it was their duty to create funny, wacky, and subversive stories. “I would have conversations with art directors and editors, and our discussions would almost become fights about the way my characters looked. ‘Is this character too weird-looking? Why did you draw this wolf like this?’ And now, I think it’s the complete opposite. If you go to any bookstore, nearly every book is sophisticated and beautiful and smart.”

Fractured fairy tales, metafiction, and satire are far more common in kid lit today, thanks in part to artists like Smith. Nowadays, though, he finds himself embracing the earnest as well as the wacky. “I’ll be 64 next month, and I don’t want to be so cheeky all the time,” he notes. When he was younger, he often became frustrated with musicians and artists who created exciting works in their youth but who mellowed as they grew older. “I would think they were tired or sellouts or something, but I get it now.”

Over the years, Smith has illustrated the work of a wide range of authors, among them Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, George Saunders, Judith Viorst, Julie Fogliano, and Jory John. His experience working on magazines early in his career prepared him well for these assignments; he approaches them as though they’re puzzles to be solved artistically as he considers just the right image to sum up a scene. As he’s grown older, though, he’s found writing and illustrating his own work to be much more satisfying. “Because it’s not so much about solving the problem. It’s more of getting something across. It’s getting an idea across that I want to share with people.”

Smith admires authors like William Steig, whose picture book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969)—about a donkey who’s transformed into a large rock—is both strikingly original and profoundly moving. “You find yourself tearing up and crying when you read some of those books,” he says. “I guess I’m finally mature enough now that I’m happy to try to marry these sensibilities and do things that are a little more sentimental.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is Smith’s sense of joy. Like Stickler, he exudes a great enthusiasm for life. He drew inspiration for the story from his own daily walks with his dog and cat, where he excitedly points out everything he notices, from rocks to the bark on trees. He hopes to write another Stickler book—and to continue pushing himself to try new techniques and styles. For Smith, the future holds “more experimentation with paint and materials. Always. Children’s books give you permission to think like a kid again. What other job lets you do that? Remember grade school art class? Every week you were introduced to a new way of making pictures: collage, finger painting, potato stamps. It’s the same for me now.”

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.