Aubrey Davis (Olwyn Davis Klinker)

Children’s author and storyteller Aubrey Davis, who published four award-winning picture books with Kids Can Press, is being remembered as an exuberant and captivating storyteller.

Davis died on December 15, the Idries Shah Foundation announced.

After discovering the stories of Sufi writer and thinker Idries Shah in the 1970s, Davis began travelling the continent and sharing those stories on radio, television, at libraries, schools, and festivals in the 1980s. He wrote the story that would become his first book when he was asked to tell a Chanukah story to a big audience of young children and he couldn’t find one he liked. “The children loved it and so did Kids Can Press,” Davies wrote in his author bio. Bone Button Borscht has remained in print since it was published in 1995.

“I’ve always said that one of my favourite moments at KCP was getting to watch Aubrey seemingly pull a story out of thin air in a gymnasium full of kids at North Kipling Junior Middle School,” Naseem Hrab Kids Can Press associate publisher, creative, said in a statement. “He was accepting the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award for A Hen for Izzy Pippik, and instead of reading from the book, he said, “Let me tell you all a new story I’ve been working on … I don’t remember what the story was about, but I do remember being completely enthralled. His storytelling was magical.”