I Talk Like a River (CBC Best Picture Book/Schneider Family Award) Ages 4+
Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award
What if words got stuck in the back of your mouth whenever you tried to speak? What if they never came out the way you wanted them to?
Sometimes it takes a change of perspective to get the words flowing.
A New York Times Best Children's Book of the Year
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.
Finalist for the BC and Yukon Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize
An American Library Association Notable Children’s Book
ILA Primary Fiction Honoree
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Shelf Awareness, Bookpage, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, and more!
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of the Year
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
A CBC Best Picture Book of the Year
Jordan Scott is a poet whose work includes Silt, Blert, DECOMP, and Night & Ox. Blert, which explores the poetics of stuttering, is the subject of two National Film Board of Canada projects, Flub and Utter: a poetic memoir of the mouth and STUTTER. Scott was the recipient of the 2018 Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for his contributions to Canadian poetry. I Talk Like a River is Scott's first book for children. He lives in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island with his wife and two sons.
Sydney Smith was born in rural Nova Scotia and has been drawing from an early age. Since graduating from NSCAD University, he has illustrated numerous children''s books, including the highly acclaimed wordless picture book Sidewalk Flowers, conceived by Jon Arno Lawson, which won a Governor General's Award, among many other honours, and was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book. He is also the illustrator of Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz, for which he was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal, and which won the TD Canadian Children's Literature Prize. Small in the City is the first picture book that Sydney has written as well as illustrated. He lives and works in Toronto with his wife and son.