The Most Magnificent Team

Written and illustrated by Ashley Spires

Kids Can Press

978-1-5253-1295-3

40 pp.

Ages 4-8

May 2025 

 

The most magnificent little girl and her dog from The Most Magnificent Thing, The Most Magnificent Idea, and The Most Magnificent Maker's A to Z return and they're still making and building but with colleagues now.

From The Most Magnificent Team, written and illustrated by Ashley Spires

It's another day of doing for our young maker. She and her pug may do lots of things from helping others, snacking and dreaming but coming up with ideas for new builds is at which the child excels. Gathering her materials for her latest idea she heads down to her working space on the street and encounters another child already there. There's another little girl, this one with fabulous hair buns, a green headband, glasses and a grey cat out on the sidewalk with a collection of materials and the start of a house. Impressed with what she sees, our first little girl invites her neighbour to work with her on her new idea.

From The Most Magnificent Team, written and illustrated by Ashley Spires

Although our little girl starts off wanting to take the neighbour's ideas into consideration, the two have very different styles of working. While the girl gets right to work, the neighbour child is all about measuring and calculating and considering and making suggestions for making the idea better but never starting to build her part of the project.

 

Even when the girl just does it all her way, the neighbour girl has criticisms.

 

The neighbor insists her idea will be better.

But that's impossible since the girl's idea is already the BEST.

And you can't make the best BETTER – it's already

THE BEST!

 

From The Most Magnificent Team, written and illustrated by Ashley Spires

Not only does the neighbour criticize, but she also undoes the work of the girl. At this point, they huff off and decide to work on their own projects. But they both feel their projects to be mediocre, more "HMMM" than "WOW" so decide to amalgamate. They combine their efforts and help the other and while they still run into disagreements, they find that taking a breath, consulting their canine and feline assistants and rejigging their concept can lead to something even more magnificent than they imagined.

 

They might do things differently, and

they'll probably disagree sometimes, but they

know that whatever they make together is

sure to be MAGNIFICENT.

 

Working with someone can be challenging the first time. You have to take into consideration their ideas and their way of doing things and it might require some compromise and even relinquishing some control. But what happens when your styles of making are drastically different? The little girl in Ashley Spires's The Most Magnificent Team finds out soon enough that it's not just a question of adding a person to the mix. It doesn't mean your workload will be lessened immediately or that it'll be more fun. It sometimes means more work upfront to get to know them, how they work, how they can contribute and how to deal together when the partnership is challenged. Fortunately, Ashley Spires shows how a partnership or team can develop from individuals through disagreement and into compromise and finally lead to success and achievement. While young children will certainly benefit from reading a story about how a team comes together, whether they are working in a makerspace, on a sports team or in a group on a class project, I believe their teachers and parents would also be helped to understand that kids don't always hit it off immediately and that with time they can find solutions for themselves that work. It might not always be the solution we would have chosen, but if it's a solution that works for all, we have to let them try.

From The Most Magnificent Team, written and illustrated by Ashley Spires

I love Ashley Spires's stories whether it be her Binky the Space Cat or Burt the Beetle series or her standalone books like Larf and Small Saul. Though her approach is playful, and her illustrations whimsical and bright, she handles tough issues of fitting in and trying your best. In The Most Magnificent Team, Ashley Spires gives us two very different children and helps them find a way to work together, a big goal for everyone. Still, Ashley Spires always keeps it good-natured and lighthearted rather than confrontational or competitive. The kids want to work together; they just haven't figured out how to do it yet. But they do and their collaboration becomes a masterpiece for all, assistants included.

 

Being a magnificent creator can be a solitary activity, whether it be building or writing or something else altogether. But it can be the work of a team and, when a team works together, it can be truly magnificent.

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

Boxitects

Written and illustrated by Kim Smith

HarperCollins Canada

978-1-44345-611-1

40 pp.

Ages 4-7

September 2019

Whether cats or kids, boxes are a source of endless fascination and play.  Now, with the proliferation of makerspaces in libraries and play-based learning in kindergarten, building with materials such as boxes is all the rage, as it is for Meg, an architect whose medium is boxes.

From Boxitects by Kim Smith

Meg's mother, supportive of her child's creative endeavours, sends her to Maker School where there are "blanketeers, spaghetti-tects, tin-foilers, and egg-cartoneers" but, as a boxitect, Meg is a unique. There she learns about making structures useful, strong and beautiful.

From Boxitects by Kim Smith

Then a new kid arrives and she is an amazing boxitect too. But Simone does not hold back her advice to Meg, directing her how to improve her structures. So Meg reciprocates. The two little makers are obviously more interested in showing who is the better boxitect than working together, and this poses a problem when the annual Maker Match is announced and the children must work in teams. Unfortunately Meg wants to build a tree house and Simone is determined to construct a ship so the two children begin to create their own structures, each continuing to amend their own to be taller and more impressive. It's not until a catastrophe befalls the structure that Meg and Simone learn some valuable lessons about working with others to create.

From Boxitects by Kim Smith

Kim Smith, who illustrated the Ice Chips series by Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor (HarperCollins Canada), adds the whimsy to her art through her use of colour and shape. There is no mistaking the boldness of Meg and Simone's creative work in the Calgary artist's illustrations produced digitally with Photoshop. Through edges straight, scalloped and round, doorways and flags of various shapes, and bright tints and patterns, Meg and Simone's maker structures reach the stars, fly off the pages, and spill out of the makerspace. They show the impact of exploration and imagination and encourage thinking outside the box. With her own originality of thought and art, Kim Smith demonstrates to little ones that looking at problem-solving from a different perspective or discovering new ways of expression is a win-win for makers big and small.

From Boxitects by Kim Smith