The Most Magnificent Team - Ashley Spires - ★★★★.½

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AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: Ashley Spires
SERIES: Most Magnificent Thing, #4
GENRE: Children's Picture Book.
PUBLICATION DATE: May 6, 2025.
RATING: 4.5 stars.


In a Nutshell: The fourth picture book of the ‘Most Magnificent’ series, and possibly the most helpful one for today’s kids. The focus is on team work, and the resultant content is funny as well as practical. Much recommended!


Plot Preview:
Our little tinkerer, still unnamed after four books, and her pug are as amazing as ever at working together and creating stuff. One day, when the girl goes to her usual place to work on her latest brainwave, she sees that there’s someone already there: a new neighbour with her pet cat. This neighbour also seems to love inventing, so the girl offers her a chance to work together on her new project. But when two strong-minded imaginative thinkers get together, can the going be easy?


The first three books of this series have been quite helpful in getting kids to use their imagination and handle creative disappointments, but when working alone. (Or perhaps I should say, when working as the sole human on a project with the only assistant being your pet dog.) However, for most kids today, school projects are group projects. Working as part of a team (with humans, not dogs) requires a whole different skillset, and many children struggle to be as effective when they are in a group. As such, this story is possibly the most useful for today’s kids.

Our usual tinkerer is still unnamed; an idea I have come to appreciate as it helps us see the character in a generic mould without any preconceived name bias. It is fun to see a new human character finally added to this series, and this creative companion is also unnamed, referred to just as ‘neighbor’. The grey cat finally gets a proper role in this series, as the neighbour’s pet. So it is not just our tinkerer who has to learn to work together with a new friend, but her assistant pug also has to share assistant credentials with a cat!

The text is marvellous as always. Written in ordinary prose, the content encompasses several action words and emotive words. This book also follows the series pattern of writing some words in CAPS for greater stress. One more thing I noticed is how the girl constantly thinks in terms of ‘MAGNIFICENT’, thereby justifying the name of the series.

The illustrations are again stunning. I am amazed at the creativity of the author, who is also the illustrator of this entire series. Every single graphic has so much detailing! I especially enjoyed the expressions of the two animal characters.

On an aside, I am really enjoying the dedications in these books. They are always apt for the story!

Overall, this has been one heck of a series. I’d strongly recommend all the books to imaginative little inventors and artists aged 4-8 years. The book is a standalone and the entire series can be read in any order. If there are any more Most Magnificent books in future, I’ll be sure to grab them.

My thanks to Kids Can Press for providing the DRC of “The Most Magnificent Team” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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