'My Baba's Garden' By Jordan Scott, Illustrated by Sydney Smith

 

From the BLURB: 

The special relationship between a child and his grandmother is depicted in this sumptuous book by an award-winning team. 

Inspired by memories of his childhood, Jordan Scott’s My Baba’s Garden explores the sights, sounds, and smells experienced by a child spending time with their beloved grandmother (Baba), with special attention to the time they spent helping her tend her garden, searching for worms to keep it healthy. He visits her every day and finds her hidden in the steam of boiling potatoes, a hand holding a beet, a leg opening a cupboard, an elbow closing the fridge, humming like a night full of bugs when she cooks. 

Poet Jordan Scott and illustrator Sydney Smith’s previous collaboration, I Talk Like a River, which received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award expored a cherished memory shared between a father and son. In their new book, they turn that same wistful appreciation to the bond between a boy and his grandmother. Sydney Smith’s illustrations capture the sensational impressions of a child’s memory with iconic effect.

In 2020 I read author Jordan Scott and illustrator Sydney Smith's debut picture-book together, I Talk Like a River - about a young boy frustrated with his stutter, being taken on a day-trip by his Dad to reconnect with nature and learn to go slow, and take it easy on himself. 

That book - beautiful, gentle and empathetic - ended up winning the Schneider Family Book Award, and it has lived in me ever since. It was a perfect picture-book, and all the more powerful for being based on Scott's childhood which he wrote about in a short letter at the back of the book; about how is Dad would pick him up from school on "bad speech days," and how now as an adult he sees his stutter as a beautiful part of himself and how he communicates. 

I have been waiting for a second book from the duo ever since, and now it's finally here in 'My Baba's Garden' and it's just as stunning and powerful. 

This time in a letter at the start, Scott writes about 'My Baba' - explaining that this tale is also from his own childhood; of a young boy and his Polish grandmother who emigrated to Canada with her husband, the boy's Dziadek, after the terrible World War. The boy would be taken to his Baba's house (a renovated chicken coop beside a freeway) every day and she'd walk him to school; on rainy days being sure to pick up worms the weather scattered on the pavement, to be put to use in her beautiful and lush garden. 

The kicker - and connection to 'River' - is that the boy's Baba does not speak English, and he does not speak Polish. They communicate through touch, laughs, facial expressions and little rituals - like kissing food that's fallen on the floor, and then eating it immediately. 

This is another beautiful and timeless tale of communication and finding grace in ourselves and each other, the natural world, and little sacred rituals in the ever day to ground and connect us. Sydney Smith's darker illustrations with pops of red and yellow to draw the eye serve the story so beautifully, particularly in the rain-soaked pages where even droplets on windows are captured beautifully. 

I hope these two have more books in them, because I absolutely love being floored by the power and art in a story of such big ideas presented so tenderly through a child's lens. These two and their tales are *magical*!

5/5

'I Talk Like a River' written by Jordan Scott, illustrated by Sydney Smith

 

From the BLURB:

I wake up each morning with the sounds of words all around me. 

And I can’t say them all . . . 

When a boy who stutters feels isolated, alone, and incapable of communicating in the way he’d like, it takes a kindly father and a walk by the river to help him find his voice. Compassionate parents everywhere will instantly recognize a father’s ability to reconnect a child with the world around him. 

Poet Jordan Scott writes movingly in this powerful and ultimately uplifting book, based on his own experience, and masterfully illustrated by Greenaway Medalist Sydney Smith. A book for any child who feels lost, lonely, or unable to fit in.

Absolutely beautiful messaging, wonderfully and artfully told. About a boy who stutters, and what that *feels* like both physically and emotionally.

On “bad speech days” when his classmates laugh and the words won’t come out, his Dad collects him from school and they go to the boy’s favourite place - the river. It’s here that the father makes the connection that he “talks like a river”, the “whirling, bubbling, churning, and crashing,” river . But beyond that is also calm, beyond the rapids where “the water is smooth and glistening.”

It’s not just that Jordan Scott has provided a fabulous simile for young people to think of their speech patterns, but he’s portrayed a caring and patient father gentle with his son and the obstacles he’s got before him. It’s heartwarming and wonderful.

Sydney Smith’s illustrations are watercolour, with delightful bleeds and runs that mimic the water theme - and they’ve captured light on water play magnificently.

At the back of the book is a letter from Scott called “How I Speak” which details his own childhood - and adulthood - having a stutter, being “dysfluent” and how that’s apart of his identity.

This book is very special. I bought it for my nephew who is 3 and stutters, and will be beginning speech therapy shortly - I wanted to gift it to him one day if he needs it, but I think I also hoped for some insight into how I could help him ... and I know Jordan Scott gave me that within these pages.

5/5