Elizabeth Cleaver's colourful collage illustrations in The New Wind Has Wings, ABC, How Summer Came to Canada, The Loon's Necklace, The Mountain Goats of Temlaham, and The Fire Stealer, as well as in The Miraculous Hind and Petrouchka (both of which she wrote) brought her international recognition. For her illustrations in The Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada (edited by Mary AliceDownie and Barbara Robertson) she was awarded the first Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon medal for illustration by the Canadian Association of Children's Librarians, and for Petrouchka she was awarded the Canada Council Children's Literature Prize.