Friends please enjoy this guest post from children’s book author and blogger Tara Lazar. Her new book, which you’ll hear about below, scored BIG with my two girls! 

Your lovely hostess Tiffany asked me to guest blog today for the release of my newest picture book, NORMAL NORMAN. So as I’m preparing to write, I’m scrolling through her blog posts. I’m a parent of two daughters and I thought, OMG, I NEED THAT! The Beach Aquarium Catch-and-Release bucket! The puff pastry recipe! The Pink Pineapple dress! Does it come in MY size???

I know parents don’t necessarily NEED a book. What parents do need, though, is a chance to share a special moment with their children, laughing like silly gooses. (Ooh, that’s a great title for my next project, SILLY GOOSES!) Anyway, you can see I get easily distracted…SQUIRREL!

I love bedtime storytime. Times two. We relax all cozy under a fluffy down blanket to read and laugh together. It’s an opportunity to begin a family tradition and to foster a love of books that will last a lifetime.

To that end, I write funny books, stories that kids will want to read again and again without annoying the parents because there are jokes for grown-ups, too. I don’t sit down to write thinking I want to impart a message or a moral in my books.

However, when a life lesson emerges from comedy just by the wacky actions of a character I cannot control, I think it’s the best kind of story you can create. NORMAL NORMAN is such a story.

A junior scientist, a young girl with a lab coat and clipboard, attempts to define the word “normal” with her not-so-cooperative subject, a purple orangutan named Norman. With his bright, colorful fur and nerdy glasses, we can already guess that something’s amiss. Much to the narrator’s chagrin, Norman does NOTHING according to plan. He eats pepperoni pizza instead of bananas, sleeps in a bunk bed and zooms around in a dual-rocket jetpack. Oh, what’s a normal scientist to do?

NORMAL NORMAN lets us all know that being normal is totally overrated. Norman would much rather be himself than conform to some pre-determined primate perfection. And that’s the way it should be for all of us, right? To be ourselves and to let others be themselves, too. I hope after reading this hilarious book kids learn that everyone is different and that differences make life interesting, that differences aren’t so scary. I hope they find it easier to make a friend with someone who is a little different than they are. That’s something that children need, reassurance that there really is no such thing as “normal”.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I really NEED to buy that Pineapple dress—three of them for matching mommy-and-me outfits. Can’t you see my eldest daughter rolling her eyes? I don’t care; I’ve never been the NORMAL mom and that’s the way I like it.