Award-winning author illustrators Julie Flett and Sophie Blackall sat down for a chat on the occasion of Children’s Book Week 2025. Flett created this year’s poster on the theme: “An Ocean of Stories,” and Blackall did the honors in 2024, illustrating “No Rules. Just Read.”

Julie Flett is a Cree-Métis artist and an award-winning author and illustrator of books for children including Birdsong, We All Play, Let’s Go!, and others. Her honors include the New York Times / New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book Award.

Sophie Blackall is an award-winning illustrator of over 50 books for children, including the New York Times best-selling Ivy and Bean series, the 2016 Caldecott Medal winner, Finding Winnie and the 2019 Caldecott Medal winner, Hello Lighthouse, which she also wrote.

Launched in 1919, Children’s Book Week is a national literacy initiative of Every Child a Reader, with related resources and activities available on the CBW website.

​Sophie Blackall: Hi Julie! Your Children’s Book Week poster is SO beautiful, and I’m so glad to have this excuse to talk to you because we’ve emailed but never met or spoken, and I love your work so much. But first, HOW ARE YOU DOING? I know it’s a loaded question these days…

Julie Flett: Hi Sophie! Thank you! There’s nothing like connecting with other book makers.. I love the work you do with Milkwood bringing artists and authors together to do just this.

As far as how I’m doing, I’m thinking a lot about what we can do right now. And as book makers, I think it’s those collaborations and our work with kids and youth. I think about how we’re held in this connection with everything around us, the land, the water, creatures, our communities, and about holding those connections dearly.

SB: I’ve been wrestling with this too. I don't want to just sit back because if I'm complacent, , if enough other people like me who are too shy or polite to raise their voices, if we all stay silent, then what? I went to an event with Brian Selznick talking about his new YA book and he said something very similar, wondering what he could do to make a difference in these unsettling times and then he remembered, This is what I do. I make books. I had a forehead-slapping moment: of course. We make books for children and that’s really important . It’s an enormous privilege and it's an enormous responsibility …does that resonate with you at all?

JF: Yes it does, a deep care for connecting with children. We're doing it in the work and I think that that is relevant and important, and as you say, it’s a privilege and a responsibility.

SB: Can we talk about your gorgeous poster? I want to ask about your process and illustration technique, but first, tell me about the theme, An Ocean of Stories…

JF: It was such an honor to be asked to create this year’s poster. To follow your poster from last year . The Children's Book Council/Every Child a Reader gave me a few titles to choose from—I loved them all. In the end, An Ocean of Stories stood out to me, it feels like a watery time, vast and deep and relational. So that was the one!SB: In that there’s a long history, a deep ocean of stories beneath us and we have an opportunity to learn from the stories that have gone before?? 

JF: I was thinking more metaphorically, about going deep into things, the water, our spirits, our connections to the water, stormy times and calm times.

The poster itself is a calm image, the little person sticking their finger into the water, a sea turtle swimming up to touch her finger, each curious about the other, all of those connections including that beautiful part of water, dreamy and pondering.

SB: Right. And you’ve spoken about your admiration for young land and water stewards, like Autumn Peltier…

JF: Autumn really came to mind as an inspiration for the poster. And all of those who bring this into their work, reminding us of our deep relations to the land and water.

SB: As I look at the poster, the first thing I’m struck by is how the art is on the perimeter and you've left this open space in the center, which could be a lovely metaphor for all the things that we've been talking about, amplifying the voices and stories of young people, …

JF: I love thinking about the space we make for kids to bring their own imaginations to the work. And the excitement of taking off from there, all of the things they’ll put together on their own.

SB: Yes, that's lovely, so much possibility. I love how the sea lion is entering on the right and then exiting on the left, maybe it’s two sea lions but it also could be the same one…

JF: It’s like who's coming up to see you now? “I want to see what's happening up there – or down there” and all the little stories and connections to be made.