Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale?

Written by Caroline Woodward

Illustrated by Claire Victoria Watson

Pownal Street Press

32 pp.

Ages 3-7

June 2024

 

With humour and rhyme, Caroline Woodward, who wrote the text for beautifully illustrated picture books  A West Coast Summer (2018) and Singing Away the Dark (2017), again takes us to her beloved West Coast to really take in all the sensory experiences that life there offers. We will hear, and see, and smell, and taste, and learn and wonder at the unique ecosystem that is the ocean and its coast from those who live and enjoy it.

Have you ever heard a whale exhale

and SLAP the water with its tail?

Breathing in after breathing out,

heaving WHOOSH with a mighty spout!

Our visit to the West Coast has us listening to a whale as it breaches, breathing and tail slapping and spouting. Its behaviours may be typical but to any observer they are captivating and revealing. Such are the actions of the seals who spy-hop to see what's going on–one with a monocle suggests they are paying close attention–or of the oystercatcher, a shore bird, who can pry open molluscs.

From Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale? by Caroline Woodward, illus. by Claire Victoria Watson

And what of the smelly sea lions and the squawking seagulls, eagles and dolphins? All have their place and ways of living that intrigue and reveal life on and near the ocean. But Caroline Woodward also includes humans who are invited to think about what it means to be these animals and the ocean and what living on it and near it is truly like.

From Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale? by Caroline Woodward, illus. by Claire Victoria Watson

By phrasing her text as a series of questions, Caroline Woodward invites the reader to think about the ocean, its animals and their behaviours, including those of humans on the water, at a campfire or something else. Questions like "Have you ever felt the freezing north wind blow...?" or "Have you ever wondered why eagles love to fly..?" encourage young readers to look and smell and feel a little deeper about the coast and its inhabitants and not take for granted that which makes the West Coast their home.

From Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale? by Caroline Woodward, illus. by Claire Victoria Watson

Like Caroline Woodward, illustrator Claire Victoria Watson is a creator in British Columbia. Her visual art blends a variety of media including pen and ink, watercolours, and acrylic, with some digital design. Though the media she uses are plentiful, there is still a simplicity to her art that helps the readers focus on the smells–wavy lines emanating from the sea lions make this clear–or the sounds or the visuals of the scenes depicted. And though she follows Caroline Woodward's text to bring life to Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale?, Claire Victoria Watson also adds her touches of humour. There are the cormorants with the clothespins on their noses, the gray whales fine dining on herring roe, and a cowboy-hatted octopus square dancing or at least trying to. The message about the ocean and the diversity of its animals is never lost but it is told playfully as well as naturally.

From Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale? by Caroline Woodward, illus. by Claire Victoria Watson

Have You Ever Heard a Whale Exhale? may not cover every animal that lives in the ocean or near it, but it does cover an important message of appreciating our natural world so that we might protect it and all its inhabitants.

 🐋🦭🌊

 

Picture Book Giveaway 📫📘

 

Because I was fortunate to receive two copies of this lovely picture book,  I would love to share one with a reader of CanLit for LittleCanadians. (Only Canadian addresses are eligible to apply. Sorry.)

 

Leave a comment about the ocean (whether you've visited one or not) for me on X (formerly known as Twitter) by tagging me @HelenKubiw or on Bluesky at @hkubiw.bsky.social and using the hashtag #HaveYouEverHeardAWhaleExhale. I'll log all comments until Friday, July 26th, 2024 at 12 noon (EST) and then do a random draw. If you are selected, I will DM you to let you know and get details about where to send the book.

 

Good luck everyone! 

 

 🐋🦭🌊

A Flock of Gulls, a Chorus of Frogs

Art by Roy Henry Vickers

Text by Robert "Lucky" Budd

Harbour Publishing

978-1-990776502

28 pp.

Ages 2-6

April 2024 

 

Roy Henry Vickers and Lucky Budd have taken young children on learning experiences into the natural world along the Pacific coast through their First West Coast Book series since 2017. Through colour and rhyme, shape and textured words, kids have been introduced to the concepts of the alphabet (A is for Anemone), animal sounds (Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak), numbers (One Eagle Soaring), colours (Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue) and more. Now they will graduate to a higher concept, that of animal groupings, something with which many adults still struggle to name correctly. (FYI, it's a clowder of cats, and a murder of crows, just to name a few.) But Roy Henry Vickers and Lucky Budd keep us on the West Coast to revisit many animals they'd introduced in earlier books. 

From A Flock of Gulls, a Chorus of Frogs, art by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Lucky Budd

In easy rhyme, Lucky Budd gives us the terms for groups of orcas and seals, jellyfish and eagles, elk and foxes. They are animals of the air, of the water and of the land.

A jumble of jellies is called a bloom.

Shoals of dolphins zip and zoom.

The words are few, perfect for a concept book, with the grouping name in bold text for easy spotting. And yet, even with few words, Lucky Budd gives us movement and spirit. He carries us to play with the sea otters and fly with the gulls and geese. The text is truly evocative of a natural setting teeming with life, even quiet, resting life. And we learn.

From A Flock of Gulls, a Chorus of Frogs, art by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Lucky Budd

As always, it's Roy Henry Vickers's art that elevates the amazing text to the divine. With limited colours and spot-gloss in each spread, Roy Henry Vickers's takes us to a natural world of beauty and relationship, between environment and animal. His Northwest Indigenous art style is rich with formlines that give shape to heads and tails, wings and appendages. Even when those lines are at their simplest, as in the earth of foxes or the galaxy of sea stars, they hold forms that are distinct and evocative of heart.

From A Flock of Gulls, a Chorus of Frogs, art by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Lucky Budd

This may be a board book and a concept book that is aimed at our youngest children, but A Flock of Gulls, a Chorus of Frogs could more accurately be intended for all ages. Its small size may disqualify it as a coffee table book but, between the information that is relayed through simple rhyme and the expressive illustrations that exhibit page after page of incomparable art, this book could easily spark discussion and uplift a room or library beyond a lovely teaching tool.

• • • • • • •

First West Coast Book series, to date

Hello, Humpback! (2017)

One Eagle Soaring (2018)

Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue (2019)

Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak (2020)

A is for Anemone (2021)

A Flock of Gulls, a Chorus of Frogs (2024)

A is for Anemone: A First West Coast Alphabet

Illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers

Text by Robert Budd

Harbour Publishing

978-1-55017-947-7

28 pp.

Ages 2-6

June 2021

Don't be fooled by A is for Anemone's genre as a concept book into believing it is a simply book that "just" teaches the alphabet. A is for Anemone is so much more. In the hands of master collaborative duo Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd, A is for Anemone is a wonder of the sounds and textures of the West Coast, revealed through breathtaking art and rhythmic text.

 

From A for anemone to Q for the quillback fish and finally Z for the snoring of a sleeping grizzly, A is for Anemone rejoices in the animals, plants and waterways of the West Coast, taking young readers onto and into the water, along on hikes and into the air.

From A is for Anemone, illus. by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

There are dogfish and urchins, geese and humpbacks. There are islands and mountain peaks, rainbows and sunsets. There are totem poles and paddlers, fishboats and clamdiggers. And everywhere, there is art.

From A is for Anemone, illus. by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

Robert Budd keeps the text short–most statements are only 5 to 6 words–but impactful, sharing with readers the sensory nature of the West Coast and its elements, both natural and man-made.  Whether it's "Jellies waltz in watery swirls" or "Totem poles tell our stories," Robert Budd walks us into the West Coast, letting us spy on the beauty found in its heritage, its natural history and its landscapes.

From A is for Anemone, illus. by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

Artist Roy Henry Vickers brings that West Coast spirit into colour and shape with his illustrations. His digitally-rendered art is saturated with the vivid colours of rainbows, sunsets and vegetation and the duskiness of overcast skies and cool waters. From mountain ranges and coastal spits to oceans teeming with life, Roy Henry Vickers welcomes us to his West Coast. But in addition to the evident illustration that celebrates the West Coast, Roy Henry Vickers's art is embedded with spot-gloss illustrations that add a glow and textural element to each. There are the multiple totem poles on the "T" page and fish and birds and more throughout the book that invite the reader to touch and feel and discern forms not easily seen. With this spot-gloss art, Roy Henry Vickers has imbued the concept book with more than just the alphabet or the West Coast. He has shared with us his First Nations ancestry and artistry. (Do check out his gallery at https://royhenryvickers.com/.)

From A is for Anemone, illus. by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd's First West Coast books are always a treat for teaching important first concepts like animals, numbers, colours, sounds, and now letters to young children. However, because of the sensory journey that young readers are taken on, the learning is elevated, carrying them over the water and land and into the air to truly see the West Coast as they read or listen.

 

Hello Humpback! (2017)

One Eagle Soaring (2018)

Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue (2019)

Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak (2020)

A is for Anemone (2021)

If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden

Written by Kay Weisman

Illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers

Groundwood Books

978-1-55498-970-6

32 pp.

Ages 5-9

September 2020

Sea gardens are man-made reefs traditionally constructed by Pacific Northwest Indigenous peoples for cultivating clams and other shellfish. Some of these sea gardens which consist of boulders lined up at the lowest tide line have been around for thousands of years. They are significant cultural elements of the First Nations both for the food that is provided by the shellfish harvested here and the community that utilizes them and Kay Weisman brings readers to that community of gratitude with her words as Roy Henry Vickers delivers us to that sense of place.

From If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden by Kay Weisman, illus. by Roy Henry Vickers

If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden begins with a child and adult setting out in the early morning when the sea gardens are revealed by the lowest of tides. They take their canoe out at dawn and "Listen closely for the symphony of clams, welcoming us to their beaches. Here, there and everywhere they spurt and sputter, exhaling right on cue."

As they walk on the beach, the elder, whether grandfather or father, recounts the history of the sea gardens, around for thousands of years, sometimes built piecemeal over time, to give habitat to creatures including rock crabs, chitons, sea stars and, of course, butter clams, littlenecks and cockles.

Imagine the generations of First Peoples who have maintained this wall in order to feed their families. They have come here to build and care for the sea garden, harvest and eat clams, and share stories and knowledge about this special place.

From If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden by Kay Weisman, illus. by Roy Henry Vickers

Like the many to have come to the sea garden, they tend to the garden, returning stray boulders to the wall, clearing away debris and giving new opportunities for the sea garden to thrive. And then, with the tide, it is gone from view, until its next revival.

Kay Weisman makes this pilgrimage to a sea garden a sacred experience for people and the environment. From the interaction between child and adult, solemn and instructive, to the awe-inspiring landscape of forever, Kay Weisman is respectfully informing her readers and honouring the legacy of sea gardens.

From If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden by Kay Weisman, illus. by Roy Henry Vickers

With Roy Henry Vickers's illustrations, which I have admired since reviewing his earlier books (Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak; Hello Humpback; One Eagle Soaring), If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden is elevated. I learned from Kay Weisman's words but they are given life with Roy Henry Vickers's artwork. Using vector illustration tools, Roy Henry Vickers gives a smooth power to his images. While the people are kept in shadows, the scenes are bold and spirited and important symbols of Indigenous cultures are highlighted. The art both gives life and takes our breath away.

If you want to visit a sea garden and cannot tour the West Coast, I suggest a stroll with a child and guardian in Kay Weisman and Roy Henry Vickers's captivating picture book. It's a safe and vibrant way to understand the magic of these amazing sea gardens.

Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak

Illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers
Text by Robert Budd
Harbour Publishing
978-1-55017-904-0
20 pp.
Ages 2-6
June 2020

If you’re going to introduce the mooing of a cow and the quacking of a duck to young children, be sure to expose them to the symphony of the Northwest Coast’s landscape for a sonorous sensory experience evoked by Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd in their fourth book in their First West Coast book series.

From Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak, art by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

As in their earlier concept books in this series, Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd have blended rich graphics with simple words evocative of a beautiful British Columbia environment. There are rivers that rush with whisper and splash; drummers that beat with boom, bang, and pound; cedars that rustle with a murmur and a creak; and geese that fly high with honk, hiss and flap. There are people and places, animals and nature: living, moving, resonating with energy, both subtle and blaring.

From Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak, art by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

If you close your eyes, Robert “Lucky” Budd’s words embed you on the BC coast, hearing, sensing, experiencing its many, many glorious attributes. (In my interview tomorrow with the author and artist, Robert Budd tells how their final double spread was used to pack in the sounds of another twelve animals under the text “with Nature Singing all around”.) The rolling water against a boat or a shore, the overhanging trees, the animals on land, in water, and in the air, while people interact with the natural environment–it’s the life and sound of this place.

Artist Roy Henry Vickers does more than do justice to the text; he conjures it with depth and layers and authority. From the coniferous forests and snow-capped peaks, to waters still and turbulent, and creatures engaged with their worlds, all enriched with spot-gloss elements, Roy Henry Vickers uses strong lines and shape to transport the reader to this place. The art reflects and honours his First Nations heritage and shares it with readers.

From Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak, art by Roy Henry Vickers, text by Robert Budd

Whether the readers are the very young who will recognize the images, rich in their simplicity, and vocalize sounds depicted within, or adults who will revel in the heart of the art and words, Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd have brought the spirit of the West Coast to the page once again.

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Look for my interview with Roy Henry Vickers and Robert "Lucky" Budd tomorrow here on CanLit for Little Canadians.

 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Check out all four books in the First West Coast book series which includes:

 Hello Humpback! (2017)

One Eagle Soaring (2018)

Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue (2019)

and now

Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak

A West Coast Summer

Illustrated with watercolours by Carol Evans

Text by Caroline Woodward

Harbour Publishing

978-1-550178432

32 pp.

All ages

September 2018

While A West Coast Summer may be a perfect book for reminiscences of a summer past, I think we should enjoy one last plunge into a summer on Canada's West Coast.

A West Coast Summer is a print gallery of dramatic artwork by watercolour artist Carol Evans who lives on Salt Spring Island. Her paintings–cameos, single pages pieces and art that spans double-spreads–depict children in activities along the coast, both on land and on the water, sometimes solitary, often with companions as they explore, play and reflect. It's an intense experience for all the senses as the reader steps foot in the water, cycles on a land spit, scrutinizes the small amidst the majestic landscape of trees and rock, honours their ancestry and accompanies friends and family on common and extraordinary adventures.

Art by Carol Evans from A West Coast Summer, text by Caroline Woodward

You will hear descriptors of the art as gorgeous, breath-taking and beautiful and they are all those things. By Carol Evans's hand, the water becomes palpable, lapping or still, serene or powerful, a playmate, a well of life, or a depth of secrets.  Her ability to give light to landscapes both open and sheltered is astounding. Most readers will feel the need to look closer to convince themselves that Carol Evans's art is not photographic or at least not produced with a camera.  It is not, but it is certainly true to life while evocative of time and place and feeling.

Art by Carol Evans from A West Coast Summer, text by Caroline Woodward

Caroline Woodward, author children's book including Singing Away the Dark (illustrated by Julie Morstad, Simply Read Books, 2011), knows how to put power in words. She hears what children are feeling and thinking and takes the reader with them to the places they visit. The lines

To the sea, to the sea,
who or what waits here for me?

are repeated several times through the book, with rhyming answers like

Sea salt in the air floats everywhere
and cedars smell so sweet beside the shore.

We explore the bog and flip over a log
to find beetles and bugs galore!

Art by Carol Evans from A West Coast Summer, text by Caroline Woodward

The dedication from Carol Evans is a telling statement about the intent of her art and the book:

Dedicated to all the children who will inherit this coastal homeland. And to the children who come to visit her. May we hand it down to you intact.

For those who live on or visit the west coast, A West Coast Summer will be familiar and comfortable.  It will be home.  For those who have never been, the book will be an invitation.

Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles

by Shari Green

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-007-9

240 pp.

Ages 8-12

September 2016

I’m trying to have faith
trying to believe everything
will be okay.
But what if things don’t work out?
What if Jasper leaves,
Daniel can’t breathe,
my parents aren’t in love?
What if my family falls apart,
and I have to choose a parent
and not
the other?
Then what good
 is faith? (pg. 145)

It must feel like the weight of the world is upon Bailey’s small eleven-year-old shoulders.  Being sent with her 8-year-old brother to stay with their hitherto-unknown grandmother, Nana Marie, at Felicity Bay on Arbutus Island on the west coast seems trepidatious enough but this strangeness is compounded by her concerns for her parents who are attending Marriage Repair camp.

My parents should be here.
We should be together
the four of us–
diamonds, clubs, spades, hearts,
Crazy Eights on a Sunday afternoon,
four quarters making a whole
like we always used to be
but might never be
again. (pg. 13)

Still Bailey has the joie de vivre to find adventures in everything from the pancakes in which she searches for the face of God–Aunt Debbie saw Tom Hanks’ face in her pancakes once– to a piece of driftwood that becomes a mermaid she christens “Our Lady of the Bay.”  And when the prophecy-delivering ice-cream man Jasper, a former preacher, foresees a stranger coming who will change everything, Bailey is hopeful that it’s Our Lady of the Bay who will bring about some good fortune.  With her parents’ marriage in need of repair, her friend and neighbour Daniel suffering with cystic fibrosis, a community divided and occasionally hostile, the compassionate Jasper being disgraced and driven out of town, and the church’s chalice missing, Bailey and Felicity Bay need a miracle or two.

But, even with these uncertainties and burdens, don’t ever think of Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles as anything but a story, told magnificently in verse form, of hope and courage and trust in the universe.  Good and bad may ebb and flow like the tides but that’s just the nature of  things.  In the end, it is what it is, and Bailey accepts it to be so.  Nonetheless it doesn’t stop her from making an all-out effort to help, whether it be her parents, Jasper, or a beached dolphin, and try to turn the tides of adversity.

Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles is Shari Green’s debut novel but it is an accomplished story in form and content worthy of a seasoned writer.  If you’ve enjoyed reviews on CanLit for LittleCanadians, you know that I am fond of novels in verse, but I fully comprehend the titanic challenge of writing one well.  Balancing structure with plot is complicated.  Yet Shari Green dives right in, creating characters and circumstances that effortlessly carry the reader from beginning to end on waves of sentiments, some fearful, most benevolent, all heartfelt.  Root Beer Candy and Other Miracles is in itself a miracle of a free verse of

“…moments
of significance,
ordinary things
that turned out to be
extraordinary.” (pg. 232)

Hannah and the Wild Woods

by Carol Anne Shaw

Ronsdale Press

978-1-55380-440-6

240 pp.

Ages 10+

September 2015

Author Carol Anne Shaw introduced West Coast Hannah and her supernatural affinities in Hannah and the Spindle Whorl (Ronsdale Press, 2010) and followed up with Hannah and the Salish Sea (Ronsdale Press, 2013).  In both stories, Hannah, a teen who lives in Cowichan Bay, had been touched by First Nations spirits of the past, giving her a greater appreciation for their history and for the environment.  Though Hannah and the Wild Woods is the third book in the series, I  am pleased to say that it can be read without reading Books 1 and 2, capably standing alone with a new set of characters and story line, while keeping Hannah tethered in spirit to her roots and passions.

It’s spring break and fifteen-year-old Hannah is heading to the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve to work with the Coast-is-Clear program, clearing beach debris, much washed up from the Japanese tsunami of 2011.  Surprisingly, also going is Sabrina Webber, Hannah’s rich-girl nemesis, who has to do some eco-community service to avoid juvie for shoplifting.

Things at home are a little tenuous with Hannah’s dad considering moving them from their houseboat at Cowichan Bay to a home in Victoria with his girlfriend, Annie.  Moreover, Hannah’s boyfriend Max is in Mexico vacationing with his family and seemingly at arm’s length.  But Hannah does have Jack, her raven buddy, who follows her to the Tofino area where she will be staying at the lodge called the Artful Elephant with other Coast-is-Clear volunteers.  Led by the program facilitator, Peter, and his girlfriend Jade, Hannah and Sabrina are joined by an older teen, Kimiko, who reveals that she lived through the tsunami and has lost her father.  But there is something unsettling about Kimiko, from the way she moves and disappears sometimes to her relentless questioning of Hannah, and it’s evident that the lodge’s resident dog, Norman, thinks things are off with Kimiko too, kicking up a fuss whenever she’s around.

When a glass ball with curious markings on a gold chain that Jack finds for Hannah goes missing, Hannah begins to suspect Kimiko.  But, Hannah has no idea how weird things are going to get, especially when she spies a fox with multiple tails and the glass ball and chain hanging from one of them.  There’s also a lone wolf that appears to be watching the lodge and the volunteers.  With Jack’s help, Hannah tries to learn Kimiko’s secret and that of the fox and wolf, and make things right for the whole lot of them, while still working to clean up the environment.  She’s one busy girl.

It’s evident that Carol Anne Shaw has great affection for the West Coast, its people and environment, and she takes the reader into that milieu easily.

I push my hair under my hat and face the sea, leaning into the wind at a forty-five degree angle.  It's as though the wind up here is on steroids! I hang for a couple of moments, feeling weightless before allowing myself to be blown back upright.  I feel a little bit like the shrubs and western hemlock out on the point, all of them growing in the same direction, shaped by years of being hammered by the relentless winds. (pg. 38-39)

Everything Hannah feels and does is embedded in that caring and concern and she is a totally believable character.  She wants to be good and do good but is still human with her distress, frustration, suspicion, worry and anger.  But by tying in elements of Japanese folklore, specifically the kitsune and Okami, Carol Anne Shaw makes Hannah and the Wild Woods into a bigger story of finding oneself and one’s family and accepting mistakes as learning steps.  Kimiko has lots of learning to do (even if she is almost 900 years old!) but, at 15, Hannah has lots of life wisdom to share.  Though there are multiple harrowing circumstances and even a devastating loss, Hannah and the Wild Woods will deliver the reader to a calm that can only appear after the storm.  Look forward to the ending.

A Brush Full of Colour: The World of Ted Harrison

by Margriet Ruurs and Katherine Gibson

An Ann Featherstone Book, Pajama Press

978-1-927485-63-7

40 pp.

All ages

For release September, 2014

I hope that the above reproduction of the book cover of A Brush Full of Colour adequately represents the brilliance of the book's images and the story of artist Ted Harrison, as told by award-winning children's author Margriet Ruurs and biographer Katherine Gibson. If I could have posted a larger graphic of the book here, I would have, because this book is virtually larger than life.

Within a scant 40 pages, the authors share Ted Harrison's progression from the coal-mining County Durham in England, to art school and military service post-WWII, teaching, immigration to Canada, and full-time artistry.  Art was nurtured from a young Harrison by his father and by his own love of reading, and thrived when living in India, Africa, Malaysia, and New Zealand, using ink and watercolours, oils, and acrylics, learning to depict only positive images, as

"There's enough sadness and misery in the world without hanging it on our walls." (pg. 14)

But it's Ted Harrison's move with his wife and son to northern Alberta and the Yukon that compelled him to break free of his early art styles which could not evoke the life and grandeur of the northern land and sky.  Incorporating the colours and techniques he'd seen in his travels, Ted Harrison explored using wild and bold colours and outlining in black, ultimately creating his effusive trademark style.

Northern Education, 1989 by Ted Harrison; Reproduced
on back cover of A Brush Full of Colour

Biographies for young readers can be difficult to write and organize successfully.  Too often, the story and details are lost in dense text, frequently with few graphics, especially when dealing with historical figures.  But A Brush Full of Colour is an exemplary youngCanLit biography having: informative text, organized well under headings such as Childhood, Travelling the World, Life in the North, and A Full-Time Artist; an assortment of visuals, including photographs and samples of Ted Harrison's artwork throughout his career; quotes from the artist; and key features of non-fiction texts such as a table of contents, index and resources section.

The artwork is rich and spirited, the artist thoughtful and A Brush Full of Colour's portrayal honours both.