The Most Magnificent Maker's A to Z

Written and illustrated by Ashley Spires

Kids Can Press

978-1-5253-0629-7

32 pp.

Ages 4-8

September 2023

I hope there are many, many schools and homes that encourage kids to make: to design and create and build and fix and keep going. Those makers will become the engineers, the mechanics, the inventors, the dreamers, and the innovators. They will become our tomorrows, and Ashley Spires, with her comprehensive alphabet of all things maker, will inspire them and answer all the questions they didn't know they needed answered in The Most Magnificent Maker's A to Z.

From The Most Magnificent Maker's A to Z by Ashley Spires

Revisiting the little girl from the award-winning The Most Magnificent Thing (2014) and The Most Magnificent Idea (2022), Ashley Spires's latest picture book delves into the process of making things by describing relevant words from A to Z. First we start with A, a girl and her assistant who brainstorm with creativity, which leads to experimenting, fixing, questioning, rethinking, and even walking away.

From The Most Magnificent Maker's A to Z by Ashley Spires

Each letter encourages kids to make things–because "Z is for ZILLIONS of possibilities"–and helps them see that every little step of imagining, planning, and building, from jotting notes in a notebook, to gathering objects and unmaking stuff that isn't quite right are all valuable to the process.

Sometimes going backward is

the best way to move forward.

Ashley Spires does not make everything look easy or straightforward, but she does make it real. Kids need to learn that makers don't always have a linear way of doing things and that sometimes there are sidesteps and backward steps and even steps that need to be erased to make that magnificent thing of which you dream.

From The Most Magnificent Maker's A to Z by Ashley Spires

Ashley Spires is a true maker of words, of ideas, of art, and undoubtedly more than is revealed in any single book. (Is the little girl Ashley Spires as a child?)  From creating her award-winning Binky the Space Cat and this Most Magnificent series, and every other picture book and early graphic novel, Ashley Spires makes readers witnesses to the creation of the wonderful. She excites kids to imagine, to try, and to endeavour that which might seem impossible. Her digital artwork of a captivated child, a cute dog, and an equally adorable cat, and loads and loads of recognizable stuff from books and a stand mixer, tape and bowls make making seem fun and easy. Even when Ashley Spires suggests that some things might not always be fun and easy–"Even the most magnificent things need a little tune up to get them rolling again"–it seems manageable.

 

To the future makers of the imaginable and the improbable, Ashley Spires shows young readers that they can make things magnificent.

• 🔨  • 📎 • 📓 •  📐•

The Most Magnificent Thing

The Most Magnificent Idea

The Most Magnificent Maker's A to Z