The Picture Book Buzz - Interview w/Megan Woodward and Review of No Ifs, Ands, or Butts

5 hours ago

7 min read

As a child, Megan Woodward lived and traveled all over the world but always felt at home with

her head in a book. She also loved movies, especially old black and white talky ones (she was a

strange child).

Combining her love of the written word with her love of film, she got an MFA in

screenwriting from UCLA and has been working as a comedy screenwriter for over 10 years.

After becoming a mom, she rediscovered her long-lost love of children’s books and has since

been pursuing a career in kid-lit.

Megan loves all things funny, from puns to satire, from sarcasm to slapstick. Thus, all of her

writing, whether for actual kids or grown-up kids, contains some element of humor.

When she’s not busy writing or procrastinating from writing, she can be found cooking, dancing,

laughing, singing, reading, or all five at once, which is a great way to either embarrass her kid or

almost burn the house down. She lives in Portland, OR, where it rains entirely too much but

never on her parade.

Book cover - a hairy creature stands on a spool, with webs, spiders, eyeballs, and bats all around it.

Megan’s the author of This Book is Definitely Not Cursed, illustrated by Risa Rodil (2024).

For more information on Megan, check out our earlier interview (here).

Her new picture book, No Ifs, Ands, or Butts, releases October 8th .

Welcome Megan, thank you so much for stopping back by to talk about your newest book

and writing.

Is there an author or illustrator (children’s or otherwise) who has had an influence on your

writing or creativity?

I’m not sure that there’s one person in particular. I read a LOT of funny picture books by various

authors whose books often influence me or inspire me to try writing a certain kind of humor. The

list of these authors would be too long to include here, but I think Julie Falatko, X. Fang, and

Maddie Frost are some of my top favorites.

Thanks for sharing these great creatives with us. What was your inspiration or spark of interest for No Ifs, Ands, or Butts?

Book cover - a taco stands on the letter "o," a kid floats in an astronaut suit, two goats headbut each side of the word "and," and a bear, pig, and pirate show their butts.

This idea started with the title. Sometimes I play around with idioms and puns in order to come

up with funny story ideas, and so I was doing that when I came up with No Ifs, Ands, or Butts. Almost immediately, I pictured an uptight narrator who didn't want anything inappropriate in the book, including butts. And the cast of uncooperative characters (who happen to have butts) was a natural development from there.

That is a funny premise and one likely to get a lot of chuckles from kids, especially when adults read it to them! How long did it take from the first draft to publication for No Ifs, Ands, or Butts? How did this compare to your first book This Book is Definitely Not Cursed?

Well I wrote the first several drafts of this book in 2023, shortly before I parted ways with my first agent. I then spent almost a year querying agents, signed with one for 6 months, then parted ways with her, and then signed with my current agent, Amy Nielsen, in July 2025— (I queried her with a polished version of No Ifs, Ands, or Butts.) Amy had almost no notes for it, so it was the first thing to go on sub with her in September 2025. We had an offer by December 2025, signed the contract in Jan 2026, and Albert Whitman got it published in UNDER A YEAR!!

So it took longer in terms of getting an agent, but once we had the offer, things moved wayyyy faster than for This Book is Definitely Not Cursed, which took 2.5 years from offer to publication.

Wow. How exciting! That was a really accelerated timeline! What's something you want your readers to know about No Ifs, Ands, or Butts?

I just want them to laugh. Reading should be joyous. And if they also take away messages about anti-book banning and knowing that there’s nothing shameful about butts— great! It also might lead to a discussion about homophones.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about the laughter. And I think it might well encourage kids to search for other homophones. Did anything surprise or amaze you when you first got to see Janelle Wahren’s illustrations? What is your favorite spread?

Internal spread - two buff goats, a taco, a bear, a child astronaut, a pig, a squirrel and a pirate all have their butts drawn on their heads.

Text © Megan Woodward, 2026. Image © Janelle Wahren, 2026.

I loved her sly little details that added an extra layer of humor— the buff rams, the parrot on the pirate’s shoulder looking at everyone’s butts. I think my favorite spread is the one where all the characters have butts on their heads.

This was definitely one of the silliest of her illustrations and a fun play on the "head butts" of the rams. What was the hardest, or most challenging, part of writing No Ifs, Ands, or Butts? What was the most fun?

I think the hardest part was deciding which jokes to cut to reduce word count. I had so many funny ideas, and it’s always tough to decide which ones are best. The most fun— writing the jokes in the first place, of course.

Trimming picture books are always so hard. Are there any new projects you are working on now that you can share a tidbit with us?

Oh I always have so many things I’m working on. I have a picture book slated for release in 2028— and I’m super excited to see illustrations for that one. I have several humorous character driven picture books with series potential out on submission (fingers crossed), and now I’m really trying to focus on writing middle grade. I have two in the works— one is a funny early illustrated middle grade series called Tales of a Fairy Crabmother, and the other is a humorous fantasy MG set in the underworld called Tombmates.

Those both sound intriguing. We will have to keep our eyes out for them. Last question, what animal or natural feature (place) do you want to learn more about? Why?

Gosh. What a hard question. I am forever curious about pretty much every animal. I’m obsessed with crows— because they’re so clever, so that would be up there. But also prairie dogs and slugs— (I have PB ideas for both of those, so I need to do some research.) In general, I am also interested in animals that people THINK are pests but are actually beneficial or even essential to the ecosystem. I think humans kill far too many things without realizing the important part they play in our world.

That might be an interesting premise for another picture book. Thank you Megan for stopping by to share with us your newest picture book.

To find out more about Megan Woodward, or to contact her:

Website: https://www.meganwoodward.com/

Twitter: https://x.com/womeganwo

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womeganwo/

Review of No Ifs, Ands, or Butts

A sparsely illustrated and succinctly worded picture book full of puns, situational humor, and a ton of word play will have kids (and perhaps a few adults) chuckling through repeated readings.

No Ifs, Ands, or Butts

Author: Megan Woodward

Illustrator: Janelle Wahren

Publisher: Albert Whitman & Co.

Ages: 4-8

Fiction

Themes:

Humor, language, and homophones.

Synopsis:

The unforgettable story of a bear, a squirrel, two rams, a pig, a pirate, an astronaut, a talking taco...and their butts.

It’s tough to tell a nice, polite story when the characters won’t cooperate. With wordplay on every page (and butts on most of the pages), this book will have readers roaring with laughter as its narrator desperately struggles to wrangle its unruly cast into staying on script.

Opening Lines:

Hello there. As the narrator of this book, it’s my job to

keep things nice, polite, and appropriate for kids.

So, before we begin, I’ll meet with the characters to

make sure we’re all on the same page.

"Yep! We're all

on page 2, see?"

"Actually,

most of us are

om page 3."

What I like about this book:

As an unseen narrator, convinced that the book has to uphold a particular level of decorum to be a book for children, meets the main characters and immediately gets a hint of how much of a handful these eight are going to be.

Internal spread - on the left, a sqirrel and two buff rams stare at the reader. On the right, a bear, taco, pig, pirate, and kid astronaut stare at the reader.

After explaining that the phrase -"on the same page," means everyone agrees, not that they are physically on the same page, the narrator tries to elicit a promise to obey their rules - "No Ifs, Ands, or Buts." I'm sure many a kid has heard that phrase and a fair number have chuckled. In this instance, the hyper-literal squirrel and others promptly note they all have butts - "What do we do about that?" Janelle Wahren's spare illustrations set the squirrel, rams, beaar, taco, pig, pirate, and astronaut kid against a white background for most of the book, drawing the reader's focus onto the word play in the dialogue and actions of the characters.

Internal spread - on the left, the astronaut and pig question the narrator. On the right, the squirrel, pirate, rams, and bear point and show off their butts.

As you can imagine, for the narrator, it all goes downhill from there. Especially as the Taco bemoans not having a 'traditional' butt. But the characters have a load of fun teasing the narrator with a bunch of homophones - such as "bare butts" vs. "bear butts" (what wrong with his anyway?) and "underware" vs. "under where." As well as playing with the differing definitions for "booty" and "headbutt." Resulting in Janelle Wahren's hilarious illustration which Megan Woodward mentions in her interview above.

Finally thinking to have gotten the characters all sorted out, the narrator begins the story...

Internal spread - a book page with holes. On the left, two rams and the pig are eating pieces of the paper and the astronaut kid's head sticks out of a hole. On the right, the pirate tears a page, while the bear and taco peek out of holes and the squirrel sits in one.

only to discover the characters have mixed up 'wholesome' and 'hole-some.' Throughout the book, a number of puns, jokes, and word play increasingly stretch the narrator's patience. Even the illustrator has a hand in pushing the narrator to "The REAR End." Kids will love that the book makes adults say funny and silly words, especially those who appreciate a good butt joke.

Resources:

which do you think is the funniest pun or homophone in the book? why?

can you think of some other homophones - words that sound the same but have different meanings - like sun/son? How could you use these pairs of words in a joke - write it or draw a picture of it.
write all your homophones on index cards or squares of paper. Turn all the words upside down and scramble them. Flip two over at a time, until you have all of the words matched.