Molly Leach

Early career

Molly Leach began her career in 1982 as a designer at Sport magazine and later designed special issues and annuals for magazines such as Sports Illustrated and Business Week.

Book design

Her career began as a designer of books when she was recruited by illustrator Lane Smith to help with the cover of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! (written by Jon Scieszka, Viking Books, 1989). She then designed Smith's The Big Pets and Glasses Who Needs 'Em? (Viking Books, 1991) before designing what would arguably be her most visible work, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (Viking Books, 1992).

In a 2002 Publishers Weekly article, "A New Day for Design," book designer Isabel Warren-Lynch echoed many of her colleagues when she said, "[Designer] Molly Leach opened the door in a lot of ways. When we saw The Stinky Cheese Man, designers said, 'This is what we want to do, too!' — and that it worked and sold made that possible." The Stinky Cheese Man is widely cited as having moved children's design into a new era.

In a 1998 essay in the Horn Book Magazine, "Design Matters," Jon Scieszka stated, "The job of a designer, in its most basic form, is to pick the style, size, and color of type, maybe pick the kind of paper and size of the book, and arrange how the type and illustrations are to be displayed on the pages available. But Molly does so much more than that in our books. When she’s done, the design tells as much of the story as the text and illustrations do."

In his book Side by Side (Walker Publishing 2001), Leonard S. Marcus stated, "Leach liked bold, headline-sized type like that often used for magazines. She thought that unusually big, dramatic type best communicated the fun of stories in which things continually went haywire. And she wanted each page to feel as if it were ready to burst at the margins."

In the same book Jon Scieszka is quoted, "People leafing through The Stinky Cheese Man would see that something different was going on — and realize that a good part of that 'something' was Molly's design." Smith seconded this with, "Jon and I both appreciate goofy, second-grade humor. If it were up to us, we would use all comic-book type or hand lettered type made of twigs. Molly, with her background in magazine design is different. She'll take what we do — and make it classy."

Steven Heller and Steven Guarnaccia state in Designing for Children (1994, Watson-Guptill), "while Smith's drawings are artfully primitive... it is the book design by Molly Leach that is the BRUTest of all... the type varies in weight, size and leading, but there are other witty tricks: for instance, where there isn't enough text to fill a page it is repeated, and when the character Chicken Licken is introduced the type, not the sky, falls on her head."

Other notable book designs by Leach are her redesigns of new editions of the complete Roald Dahl books; Jack Gantos's Joey Pigza books; a Dr. Seuss treasury, Your Favorite Seuss: A Baker's Dozen by the One and Only Dr. Seuss; and the 50th anniversary edition of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

Books designed by Leach

Personal life

Leach is married to children's book author and illustrator Lane Smith. She lives in Connecticut and New York City.