He’s a dog. There’s some cake. Decisions must be made.
Yellowknifer Nikolai Deleff returns with his second illustrated book for kids this month, which will be launched at the city’s visitor centre from 10am-12pm on Saturday, June 8.
Ahead of that, he’ll be taking part in the NorthWords Writers Festival’s panel on children’s literature and reading from the book at the festival’s Family Storytime event.
Superdog Jake and a Whole Lotta’ Cake follows the title character, modelled on Deleff’s own dog.
“My dog is confronted with a whole lot of cake and he uses his imagination to open himself up to possibilities of what to do. It’s about making friends and hopefully good decisions as well,” Deleff told Cabin Radio.
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Now 20, Deleff was 18 when he released his first book, The Bear and Ivory, in 2022.
He used an extended hospital stay to work on that book, which followed a young polar bear’s journey through the Arctic to find a rare and powerful plant that can save his mother’s garden.
This time around, he said he learned “a lot of lessons” from the experience of producing and then publicizing that first book.
Those lessons are “mostly to make the book short enough to keep the attention of the readers, as well as to go through more of an editing process to keep it as engaging as it can be.”
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The book is aimed at a kindergarten to Grade 3 audience.
The festival session on children’s literature, hosted by Richard Van Camp with Lana de Bastiani, Miranda Currie and Amber Henry also appearing, runs from 10:30am till 12pm at the Explorer Hotel on Sunday, June 2. It’s free to attend.
Family Storytime, featuring Currie, Deleff and Henry alongside Tanya Snow, Myranda Bolstad and Sarah Kalnay-Watson, runs at the Yellowknife Visitor Centre from 1-2pm on the same day and is also free.
Deleff’s next project will be a middle-grade graphic novel, he said.
“When I was a kid, I remember being read lots of different children’s books, and it created whole worlds in my life,” he told Cabin Radio, explaining his focus on publishing for kids.
“It was a creative playground, there was so much that could happen there. I think it was looking up to the books that I read in my own childhood as well.
“I wanted to create things just like that. Visual art with young kids is a great way of getting them engaged in stories.”
More: View the NorthWords 2024 schedule
Jake joins a growing kennel of northern dogs committed to print.
De Bastiani, who helped Deleff publish The Bear and Ivory, published Nick the Northern Special in 2022, which featured a variety of northern residents’ pets.
