Showing posts with label Northwest Coast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Northwest Coast. Show all posts

March 29, 2026

Raven & Friends: A Roy Henry Vickers Colouring Book for Kids

Written and illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers
Harbour Publishing
978-1-998526543
60 pp.
Ages 6–8
February 2026 
 
Raven & Friends is more than a colouring book. It's an invitation to learn how to draw in the style of Northwest Coast art. It's an offer to visit the animals of the land, water, and sky that inhabit this area. And it's a promise to help us see more than just ourselves.
From Raven & Friends: A Roy Henry Vickers Colouring Book for Kids
written and illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers
While the emphasis is on Raven and other animals like Hummingbird, Sealions, and Salmon, Roy Henry Vickers also takes us to see the sun and a Pacific sunset, and as well as a Raven Dancer and our place in the world. With Raven & Friends, Roy Henry Vickers helps us appreciate his Northwest Coast as he sees it: beautiful, natural, and part of something bigger.
From Raven & Friends: A Roy Henry Vickers Colouring Book for Kids
written and illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers
Roy Henry Vickers, with whose art I first became familiar through his First West Coast Book series with Robert "Lucky" Budd, will inspire young readers to colour but to also draw. He instructs them how to make shapes used in Northwest Coast art and allows them to practise before helping them put the shapes together into a stylized animal. But even if they aren't interested in trying their hand at drawing—though that would surprise me—Raven & Friends offers an opportunity for colour creativity and relaxation, even stress reduction. The act of putting paint, marker or crayon, pencil or wax, to paper brings calm. But with Roy Henry Vickers's artwork, that calm is sublime, transporting us to the Northwest Coast, compelling us to see beyond our own worries and intrusive thoughts, and inviting us to be present and mindful of the beauty within Raven & Friends and its subject locale.
From Raven & Friends: A Roy Henry Vickers Colouring Book for Kids
written and illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers
Roy Henry Vickers's first colouring book, Inspired (2025), was more complex, appropriate for all ages, young and adult. Raven & Friends may be considered more straightforward, less detailed in line and context, but the beauty in his art is accessible to all. For me, a retired teacher librarian, I see such elegance in Roy Henry Vickers's lines and shapes and how they merge into stunning reflections of his home, his cultures and his ancestry—Haida, Heiltsuk, Tsimshian and European—that I'm tempted to visit the Northwest Coast with my own colours and his art. I hope that whether you're six or sixty, you'll let Roy Henry Vickers guide you to a place of organic charm with his art and your colouring tools.
 
 
Check out the First West Coast Book series that Roy Henry Vickers created with Robert "Lucky" Budd.
 

June 05, 2025

Inspired: A Roy Henry Vickers Colouring Book

 
Art by Roy Henry Vickers
Harbour Publishing
978-1-998526-33-8
88 pp.
All ages
Releases June 17, 2025 

Roy Henry Vickers, an Indigenous artist of rich Tsimshian, Haida, Heiltsuk, and English ancestry, has inspired many a child through his First West Coast Books with Robert "Lucky" Budd, and art lovers with his carvings, paintings, and prints, and even music lovers through his Grammy-nominated artwork for the Grateful Dead's 2018 boxed set. With this new publication, Roy Henry Vickers shares his art with those who may be inspired to create beauty through the colouring process.

From Inspired by Roy Henry Vickers
First, I must apologize for the poor reproductions of the gorgeous pages of Inspired. As line drawings, I could not share them properly to display the beauty of their shapes and line. That is my failing, not that of the book. Once you have your own copy of Inspired, you'll see the true depth of charm and style depicted in each spread. Roy Henry Vickers does not disappoint, though my scanned images do.
From Inspired by Roy Henry Vickers
Inspired is a collection of 42 pages for the reader to colour. The perforated pages are blank on one side, allowing the reader or colourist to remove the pages easily for display. Some of the titles of Roy Henry Vickers's colouring pages, some derived from actual art pieces, include Two Salmon, Bear Claw, Frog Drum, Snowy Owl, and Skeena Northern Lights. They cover a wide variety of Pacific Coast animals, people, and places. How the reader or colourist decides to give embellishment to the art, whether with pencil crayons, markers or watercolour paint, is up to them.
From Inspired by Roy Henry Vickers
Roy Henry Vickers's style is evident in each illustration with flowing lines creating elegant abstractions. His images, even as line drawings, are powerful and magnificent, recreating familiar scenes and natural elements in wonderfully stylized Northwest Coastal art. Roy Henry Vickers, who lives in BC, blends his natural surroundings with his heritage and designs creations that are both unreal and recognizable. They are beautiful.

From Inspired by Roy Henry Vickers
Though I would be tempted to colour these images myself, I think Inspired would be a lovely gift to someone who needs to see beauty and have a hand in gracing it with colour. Roy Henry Vickers's artwork needs no embellishment; it is perfection. But, by creating a colouring book of his images, Roy Henry Vickers allows the reader, nay colourist, to be part of a process by giving them license to impart their own vision onto his outlines. It's a subtle collaboration that empowers and soothes.

• • • • • • • 

To further appreciate the art of Roy Henry Vickers, check out the First West Coast Book series he created with Robert Budd.

August 30, 2021

Learning My Rights with Mousewoman

Written and illustrated by Morgan Asoyuf, Ts'msyen
Native Northwest
978-1-55476-6260
22 pp.
Ages 3-6
September 2021

Learning lessons from elders is an important part of many cultures. Elders have the wisdom of the ages and the heart of the people, having seen and heard much. When an elder is not available, important figures like Mousewoman, a grandmother figure in Northwest Coast Indigenous cultures, can share their wisdom. Here, in author-illustrator Morgan Asoyuf's second board book for young children, Mousewoman imparts her knowledge of children's rights and those of Indigenous Peoples to little mice.
From Learning My Rights with Mousewoman by Morgan Asoyuf, Ts'msyen
Rich in the Northwest Coast art style, Morgan Asoyuf depicts Mousewoman instructing little ones of their rights to be loved, to safe touch, to food and clean water, a safe environment, and shelter. They have the rights to education, to play and to rest, and to arts and culture. They have the right to express themselves and to learn the dances and stories and traditions of their cultures too.
From Learning My Rights with Mousewoman by Morgan Asoyuf, Ts'msyen

The lessons of children's and Indigenous Peoples' rights in Learning My Rights with Mousewoman may be paramount but sadly they need to be reiterated globally to parents, to governments, to communities. By giving young children a basic understanding of their rights, Morgan Asoyuf will have given them voices to demand those rights for themselves. Moreover, by wrapping those messages about rights in the traditions of Indigenous cultures–she herself is Ts'msyen (Tsimshian)–Morgan Asoyuf reminds us all of the dereliction of many in helping to meet the rights of Indigenous children, here in Canada and elsewhere. Do they all feel safe and secure? Do they have clean drinking water? We want the answers to always be yes, but are they?
From Learning My Rights with Mousewoman by Morgan Asoyuf, Ts'msyen
But Morgan Asoyuf's message in Learning My Rights with Mousewoman elevates the story from an information book about important conventions that were ratified in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as those of the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples to an extraordinary concept book. The message is clear but the artwork and Indigenous theme make it incomparable. By connecting the rights of children and Indigenous people with her distinct art style, Morgan Asoyuf, an artist whose work also includes jewelry and carving, ensures that Indigenous children are more than acknowledged; they are seen and heard. All children will benefit from an understanding of their rights but Indigenous children will be given words and meaningful illustrations to connect those messages in Learning My Rights with Mousewoman.
From Learning My Rights with Mousewoman by Morgan Asoyuf, Ts'msyen