Meet the author

Ashley Spires.

Writer & illustrator · Canada

Ashley Spires: Canadian picture-book maker behind The Most Magnificent Thing and Binky the Space Cat — clean-lined, warm SEL-friendly picture books and early graphic novels for ages 4–8.

Ashley Spires is a Canadian author-illustrator best known for The Most Magnificent Thing (2014), a picture book about a girl trying to invent something who runs into frustration and failure before getting back to it. The book has become a fixture of US and UK PSHE / SEL classroom shelves about perseverance, resilience and creative process. Spires has also written and illustrated the Binky the Space Cat early-graphic-novel series and the Friends, Forever picture books. Her style is clean-lined, character-driven and warmly cartoony, well-suited to read-aloud SEL content. A reliable contemporary picture-book and early-graphic-novel maker for ages 4–8.