by Jessica Rose
Acclaimed paper artist Elly MacKay hopes that when children open her books, they’ll see their own surroundings as magical, finding stories in the places they enjoy. As an educator and book maker, she loves getting kids excited about creating, and that’s no surprise. Long before she wrote and illustrated award-winning picture books, she was a child growing up in a converted church in the Ontario countryside, encouraged to make magic through art by her artist parents, Steve and Joan Irvine.
“It was a very creative household to grow up in,” says MacKay, whose father, a potter and photographer, used a microscope and telescope to take pictures. Her mother wrote books, including How to Make Pop-Ups, which encouraged readers to make pop-up cards, books, and sculptures from materials found at home. Her grandmother, Barbara Irvine, was a professional painter.
“For two or three summers, my mother invited all the kids who lived within a few kilometres to our house twice a week,” recalls MacKay of the time Joan was working on her book, Make It with Boxes. “We would create everything from obstacle courses to mini putts. Then, we started making things like time machines and putting on plays,” she says, adding that the summer would culminate in a play using their handcrafted props.
“Living with the author of craft books can be very messy,” writes Joan on her website, recalling that MacKay, and her brother Seth, took an active part in trying out ideas. As a teen, MacKay took a train trip with Joan to meet members of the Movable Book Society. They gave her an informal education in papercraft and introduced her to Victorian optical toys, paper theatre and tunnel books, an influence that’s evident in her picture books, which bring together layers, lighting, and camera lenses to create a scene.
MacKay, who grew up in Big Bay, a tiny community a half hour north of Owen Sound, recalls her parents travelling when she was young, always bringing home a picture book. A favourite was Millicent by Jeannie Baker, one of MacKay’s biggest influences.
“She does everything out of found objects and clay,” says MacKay, who remembers observing little bits of straw, cloth, and wire in the book’s images. “It’s a really, really special book,” she says, also fondly recalling other interesting children’s books in her collection, including Herman the Helper by Robert Kraus.
Something else that sparked her love of picture books was a treehouse in her third-grade teacher, Mr. Cox’s, classroom.
“That was our reading spot,” she says. “Every day, he’d pick some students, or maybe we took turns, but we got to go up and do our silent reading in the treehouse. It was pretty amazing!” she says, adding that she also liked to write stories, often about horses. In Grade 1, she wrote her first story about a ghost who lived in a haunted house. She still has it somewhere.
It was while attending the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax that MacKay met her husband, Simon, who is also an artist. They returned to Ontario to be close to her parents when their daughter was born, and it’s here that Simon crafted a paper theatre as a Christmas gift.
“When I was a teenager, I used to create all sorts of dioramas and build things three-dimensionally,” she recalls, adding that the theatre allowed her to create and photograph miniature worlds out of paper despite being in a very small house.
“I started creating a portfolio that way, just taking the pictures and then taking everything apart again and building something new,” she says. She sold prints on the website Etsy, where she was scouted by an agent who connected her with Running Press, which published her first book, If You Hold a Seed, in 2013.
Written while she was pregnant with her son, who is now 13, If You Hold a Seed was a Junior Library Guild Selection and an Ontario Library Association Best Bet.
“I’d always dreamed of being a children’s book author and illustrator,” says MacKay, who has also worked as an educator at numerous galleries, working with both children and teachers to create art.
Since the publication of her first book, MacKay has published more than a dozen picture books, working with Penguin Random House Canada (Tundra Books), Candlewick Press, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Owlkids Books, and Orca Book Publishers, among others. Most recently, she’s released The Bunny Ballet, written by Nora Ericson, an enchanting picture book of fluffy plies, grand jetés, and bunny pirouettes, and Frostfire, which she both wrote and illustrated.
When it comes to illustrating the work of other authors, MacKay says every publisher, author, and experience is different.
“Usually you’re kept quite separate,” says MacKay of the author and illustrator relationship. “That’s to preserve the creative output from the illustrator. It’s really allowing for a real collaboration and equal partnership,” she says, adding there are often exceptions.
“If I know the author, and I know that they are willing to let me do whatever I want to do, it’s really wonderful to have a back and forth and some communication with them,” she says, mentioning Kallie George with whom she’s collaborated on multiple books, including The Secret Fawn and I Am a Meadow Mermaid.
“Kallie’s just an amazing person to work with. She’s so open-hearted, and I almost feel like she’s writing the story for me. She sets things up knowing that I’ll want to illustrate certain things. It’s like she weaves them into the story just for me—these landscapes and interesting whimsical scenes that she knows I’ll just love.”
George—an author, editor, and speaker living on the Sunshine Coast, British Columbia—says she and MacKay both connected over an admiration of each other’s books, eventually meeting in Toronto.
“We became friends first, before we worked together,” recalls George. “It was one of those connections where the minute we started talking, it was so easy, as if we'd known each other forever. We share a lot of the same interests and loves,” she says.
The pair first collaborated professionally in 2021 on their first book, The Secret Fawn, which was a Junior Library Guild Selection and a Dolly Parton's Imagination Library Selection.
“It's a really collaborative author/illustrator partnership. We share a lot of rough drafts with each other and brainstorm story ideas. I really trust Elly's feedback,” says George, adding that one day she dreams of creating a chapter book together.
“I think Elly is such an incredible person. She's so talented, kind and imaginative. She cares deeply about the world and others. She's a really dear friend of mine, and that's what makes it special. Also, her artwork is breathtaking. I am transported to magical places when I look at her images!” says George.
MacKay says one reason her collaboration with George is so fruitful is their shared love of nature. For example, their 2024 book, I Am a Meadow Mermaid, centres on a farm girl with a big imagination who turns her landlocked home into an ocean playground with mermaids everywhere.
A deep love for, and connection to, the natural world is evident in many, if not all, of MacKay’s books.
“When I was working on Too Early with Nora Ericson, the night sky was a big part of the story,” she recalls. “And she understood when the moon would set, and the sun would rise, and where the stars would be in the sky, so having her notes was very helpful.” Forthcoming in 2026, MacKay worked with Nora Nickum on Twelve Daring Grays: A Whale Migration Adventure, which follows a dozen gray whales in search of food as they take a high-risk, high-reward 170-mile detour off their already gruelling migration route to the Arctic.
“They’re smaller and braver, and they basically stop to fill up before they head on the rest of their journey, but it’s daring because the whales can be beached so easily,” she says, adding that she and Nickum would pass sketches back and forth to make sure even the tiniest of details were accurate.
“Non-fiction books are kind of poetic,” says MacKay. “They allow room for the softness or imaginative quality of my work. They’re not a scientific drawing, but also, I want to get things right.”
One of MacKay’s biggest inspirations is being in nature herself, which isn’t difficult living near Harrison Park and Inglis Falls in Owen Sound. She goes hiking with a group of women every week.
“Because I don’t have any co-workers that I see every day, I have a group of women who all work in the arts, or they’re independent. We’ve got a painter, a musician, a baker, and a lawyer,” she says. “It’s our time to just be in nature and to share all of the things that we’re going through in our own professional lives with each other.” MacKay also spends a lot of time in Big Bay, where she grew up.
“It’s the stone skipping capital of Canada!” she says excitedly, also mentioning favourite spots like Skinner’s Bluff and the rocky beaches of Georgian Bay with lots of fossils to be found. “I guess just living in this area, you can’t help but be inspired by nature,” she says.
Last fall, MacKay wrote and illustrated Frostfire, a playful picture book in which readers follow dragon-expert Miriam and curious Celeste on a magical winter's day walk through their garden, where a snow dragon just might be hiding! She’s currently working on the book’s follow-up, in which the sisters will be searching the garden for fox fairies in the spring. It’s one of two books she’s now working on with Tundra, also including The Island of Wild Horses, about horses who call Sable Island, Nova Scotia, home.
“It’s sort of a search for magic,” says MacKay about Miriam and Celeste’s upcoming adventures. “They find lots of intriguing things in the outdoors. Flowers that snap and acorn whistles and all the things that I love playing with outdoors are incorporated into the story.”
MacKay says she wants Frostfire to be thought of as a myth for Canadian children.
“They can look for snow dragons when they’re out in the woods. They can search for signs of frostfire on windows, and maybe hear the grumbling of a snowplow that might actually be a snow dragon.”
Working with children and helping spark their imaginations is especially important to MacKay, who loves the energy of school and gallery visits. “I love the feeling of getting kids all excited about creating,” she says. “We usually do a little storytelling exercise and it’s really fun. I’ll show a picture that has the potential to go here or there — something mysterious. And I love hearing all the different ideas they have for turning it into a story.”
When talking to children, MacKay often shows them her unique process because it’s often one they’ve never tried before.
“They’ll get to create with me with light, and often, we’ll build something three-dimensional,” she says, delighting in having teachers send her pictures of what kids have created in their classrooms later.
MacKay’s process is one that has been refined and adapted over the years.
“When I’m working on books, it’s interesting going from two dimensions to three dimensions and back to the two-dimensional surface again,” she says of a process that includes a detailed sketch, building her miniature world, and then photographing it, while also being mindful of leaving text and gutter space.
“I’ve gotten better over the years at figuring out that depth of field and how it’s all going to work when I photograph it to make sure it’s going to line up well,” she says. “But I couldn’t do that at first. At first, it was a lot of playing around, and I'd have to import the picture into the file and see how it lined up with where the text was. There’s been lots of playing over the years to figure that out.”
When assembling her 3D worlds, MacKay uses myriad materials, including acrylic inks, watercolour, pencil crayon, and small wires that make things stand up.
“I set everything up three-dimensionally and then I light it, thinking about the atmosphere I want to give. Using warm or cool lighting really changes the whole image,” she says, adding that she’ll take quite a few photographs, playing with lighting to have multiple options for the publisher to choose from. One thing she also prioritizes is consistency, making sure that all the colours look natural going from one page to the next.”
MacKay says she’ll often try to get the shot that the publisher is expecting, and then she’ll get a little bit more creative to have more options to play with. “Or, maybe I hadn’t thought of how something might look with a little foliage softening the foreground or background,” she adds.When asked about the importance of picture books, MacKay recalls not only her early years as a reader, but also the memories she’s created reading with her own children, connecting through books every evening.
“That was the most important time in our lives when our children were small. Spending that half hour every evening curled up with a book was just an amazing time,” she says, adding that she hopes parents are taking the time to do that with their kids.
“The connection is more than just parents and extended family reading to little ones,” she says. “As a teacher, I know the feeling that reading creates in a classroom, too.”
MacKay says that even when she starts a workshop or reading with older children, she’ll take out a picture book.
“It just takes a few minutes [to read], and it grounds everyone and brings everyone in as they’re listening,” she says. “You all share it, and you go through a story together. And when you go through a story together, you’re all thinking and feeling the same things. It unites you,” she says.
It’s that communication and connection that are especially important to MacKay, whether she’s connecting to books, nature, or both.
Reading “is the start of bringing people together,” she says. “It’s the beginning of conversations afterwards. Books are a place to talk about big ideas — in an approachable way.”
Jessica Rose is a writer, reviewer and editor in Hamilton, Ontario.