Each year the Alcuin Society gives awards for excellence in in book design to Canadian books. And I’ll admit it: I had never heard about them until recently, when I virtually stumbled over a mention of them when searching for something else. My bad.
I’m coming to picture books from the writing side of things, and know my art and design skills aren’t as strong as my writing, so I started looking for and at books that the Alcuin Society has honored. Howie Shia‘s Ra! Ta! Ma! Cue! took second place (2025), so I picked it up without knowing who he was or what this book was.
Now that I’ve read it, I can say a) I can see Shia’s animation background, b) this is distinctly different from most picture books, and c) this is very much a book where the design and images play a major role. There’s an active interplay between color and line, image position on the page matters a lot, and there’s a strong sense of movement throughout.
The story is strange. On one hand it is simple, even overdone: something happens to the adults, and the kids need to step up (and take action, rescue them, etc.). On the other hand, the visuals and wildly original use of sound defamiliarize everything. It’s as if the kids put on a show/rave/parade and save the world.
Good, strange, disorienting, this book really opens up possibilities for picture books.
And now I’m curious what the other Alcuin winners are like!
