Davis, Lambert

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Davis, Lambert

Personal

Born in HI; married; children: two sons. Education: Art Center College of Design, B.F.A. (illustration; with honors).

Addresses

Home and office—Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. E-mail—lambertd@lambertdavis.com; davisillustration@hotmail.com.

Career

Fine artist, muralist, and illustrator. Projects include illustrating book covers, creating banners for San Diego State University Sporting Hall of Fame, and producing commissioned art.

Writings

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Swimming with Dolphins, Blue Sky Press (New York, NY), 2004.

ILLUSTRATOR

Jimmy Buffett and Savannah Jane Buffett, The Jolly Mon, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1988, published with CD, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2006.

Caroline Arnold, The Terrible Hodag, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1989.

Virginia Hamilton, The Bells of Christmas, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1989.

Virginia Hamilton, The Dark Way: Stories from the Spirit World, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1990.

Jimmy Buffett and Savannah Jane Buffett, Trouble Dolls, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1991.

Rudyard Kipling, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1992.

Barbara Juster Esbensen, Baby Whales Drink Milk, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

Liliana Stafford, The Snow Bear, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2000.

Suzanne Kita, Willie's Wallabies, Island Heritage Publishing (Waipahu, HI), 2000.

Eve Bunting, Whales Passing, Blue Sky Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Cynthia Rylant, The Journey: Stories of Migration, Blue Sky Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Sidelights

Lambert Davis is the illustrator of a number of critically acclaimed picture books, including The Dark Way: Stories from the Spirit World by Virginia Hamilton and The Journey: Stories of Migration by Cynthia Rylant. In 2004 Davis published his first self-illustrated work, Swimming with Dolphins, which follows a young girl and her mother as they swim with a pod of dolphins off the Australian coast. "The dolphins and the ocean setting are lovingly and beautifully depicted" in Davis's story, noted Jane Barrer in School Library Journal, and a Kirkus Reviews critic described the book's "exquisite photo-realistic paintings—the star of this gentle communing-with-nature fantasy"—as "breathtaking." "Large, luminous, almost photorealistic paintings show the girl and the gleaming dolphins swimming and twirling side by side," wrote Gillian Engberg, the critic adding in her Booklist review: "Simple, elegant, and visually stunning, [Swimming with Dolphins] … will thrill children with its close-up view of a girl and her wild animal friends."

Davis made his publishing debut in 1988, when he provided the artwork for The Jolly Mon, a storybook by singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett and Buffett's daughter, Savannah Jane Buffett. Davis has more recently collaborated with the Buffetts on Trouble Dolls, a picture book for older readers that follows a young girl's search for her father, who is lost in the Florida Everglades. "Davis's atmospheric illustrations glow with the warm colors of the tropics and the same flavor as … The Jolly Mon," noted a reviewer appraising Trouble Dolls for Publishers Weekly.

A collaboration between Davis and award-winning author Hamilton on The Bells of Christmas apppeared prior to their award-winning The Dark Way. A collection of twenty-five frightening tales from around the world, The Dark Way introduces readers to vampires, goblins, genies, elves, giants, and trickster characters. According to a critic in Publishers Weekly, "Davis's misty acrylic paintings perfectly capture the other-worldly moods as they propel readers through the action."

Liliana Stafford's picture book The Snow Bear tells of the friendship that grows between Bruun, an Inuit boy, and a female polar bear that wanders into town. Bruun secretly feeds the bear and then leads her out onto the ice, only to be trapped there by a fast-moving winter storm. Lisa Dennis, writing in School Library Journal, found Davis's illustrations for the story "effective in their icy-blue evocation of a wintry world," although a critic in Kirkus Reviews stated that the artist "is more concerned with capturing Arctic light falling on snowy landscapes and tidy, cleanly drawn figures than with filling in details left out of the spare narrative."

A father and son watch a group of orcas frolicking in the ocean in Whales Passing, a story by Eve Bunting. "The real draw here," remarked a Kirkus Reviews contributor, "… is Davis's true-to-life depiction of these magnificent creatures and the sea they inhabit." In the words of a Publishers Weekly critic, "the black-and-white beauties, showcased against clear, aqua tones, glow with Davis's almost reverential touch." The Journey examines the migratory habits of locusts, gray whales, American silver eels, monarch butterflies, caribou, and Arctic terns, creatures' whose "physical attributes come to light in Davis's carefully detailed paintings," according to a Publishers Weekly critic. The artist's "highly saturated" images "emphasize the majestic," stated a contributor in Kirkus Reviews, the critic going on to deem Davis's illustrations "undeniably beautiful."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 1992, Carolyn Phelan, review of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, p. 155; February 15, 1994, Carolyn Phelan, review of Baby Whales Drink Milk, p. 1083; July, 2004, Gillian Engberg, "Beach Blanket Binkies," review of Swimming with Dolphins, p. 1848.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, March, 2006, Deborah Stevenson, review of The Journey: Stories of Migration, p. 325.

Canadian Review of Materials, March 15, 2002, review of The Snow Bear.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2001, review of The Snow Bear, p. 1369; April 15, 2003, review of Whales Passing, p. 604; July 1, 2004, review of Swimming with Dolphins, p. 627; February 1, 2006, review of The Journey, p. 136.

Magpies, September, 2000, review of The Snow Bear, p. 31.

Publishers Weekly, April 14, 1989, review of The Terrible Hodag, p. 67; October 26, 1990, review of The Dark Way: Stories from the Spirit World, p. 70; April 12, 1991, review of Trouble Dolls, p. 57; September 28, 1992, review of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, p. 80; April 21, 2003, review of Whales Passing, p. 61; February 20, 2006, review of The Journey, p. 156.

Reading Teacher, September, 2001, review of The Jolly Mon, p. 23.

Resource Links, December, 2001, review of The Snow Bear, p. 11.

School Library Journal, June, 1989, Susan Scheps, review of The Terrible Hodag, p. 82; October, 1989, review of The Bells of Christmas, p. 42; December, 2001, Lisa Dennis, review of The Snow Bear, p. 112; August, 2004, Jane Barrer, review of Swimming with Dolphins, p. 85; March, 2006, Margaret Bush, review of The Journey, p. 214.