Small in the City

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Adding the silent spread was intuitive. Some stories I have worked on were possible to punctuate with silence. Pacing is important to the flow of the story and engaging the reader but it also involves knowing when the story needs the sustained ring of the words. Illustrations can control how the story is read and can add weight to words or flip them upside down. There’s a lot of power there. Nine year old Iona amd her eleven year old brother thought at first it was about a homeless or refugee girl, or perhaps a lost child. Iona said the illustrations made her feel really sad and they were just right for the story. When she was told what the story was really about she was intrigued and really interested to find the ‘clues’. She was so happy when the ‘girl and her mother’ were re-united, as she thought. Children love a happy ending! Small in the City is the first book that Sydney Smith—an acclaimed illustrator—both wrote and illustrated himself. According to this interview (well worth a listen), it’s something he’d been thinking about for 12 years—but put off due to things like self-doubt and imposter syndrome (sound familiar, anyone?).

Small in the City by Sydney Smith - LoveReading4Kids Small in the City by Sydney Smith - LoveReading4Kids

This child knows his way round the city, but through his perspective the reader has the feeling of being dwarfed by huge buildings and nearly deafened by the clamour of traffic and people. Smith has a fine draughtsmanship in his drawings of skyscrapers and towering buidlings. There is little comfort in this sometimes surreal landscape, the sweeping rain, the bitter snow. As he moves through it, the boy tells his lost cat how to survive it. The first picture book that the award-winning Sydney Smith has both written and illustrated is a story about feeling small in the city — and finding your way home.Like the projects before this one, I had been inspired by photography. For this story, Saul Leiter, Lee Friedlander and Robert Frank dominated the inspiration folder. Their city photographs, having innovative compositions, were often near-abstract in how they shot through windows, focused on reflections and cropped their subjects. What a perfect way to describe an overwhelming, and often confusing, city environment or state of mind. Bloomington is a lively Indiana city that is dominated by the sprawling Indiana University (IU) campus. The campus is home to the Eskenazi Museum of Art, along with an array of institutions dedicated to music and the arts. Wander around Downtown and the campus and you’re bound to pass one of the city’s dozens of historical buildings listed of the National Register of Historic Places, such as Bloomington City Hall. IU has produced a stellar list of alumni, including Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, author Suzanne Collins, DNA pioneer James Watson, and many more eminent individuals. Sports fans might want to look up an IU Hoosiers game while in the city. The city seems overpowering, dense, busy, chaotic. Smith’s use of a mixture of big and small, framed and unframed images makes us see and feel how it is to be small in such an overwhelming environment. For example, she informs her unseen listener that “people don’t see you and loud sounds can scare you”. AddThis sets this geolocation cookie to help understand the location of users who share the information. Since Sidewalk Flowers, I have been interested in how wordless moments in a book can change how the book is read. Wordless moments cause a pause in the voice of the reader. It has potential to disturb the natural rhythm and punctuate words by letting them linger in the air like a bell’s sustained ring. It is especially effective if you anticipate a moment of clarity. If the images contradict the text or there is a subtext that becomes clear, adding a wordless image can give the reader a moment to process the information given. Or it could just represent a quiet in the mind of a character. As mentioned, in Town is by the Sea I used the wordless sequence to create the tension of waiting for the father. In Small in the City the text vanishes at the same time the noises of the city would in the snow storm.

Small in the City | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education

This is practically a wordless book. I love the artwork; it's gritty and rough and towering and it brings up feelings of being Small in New York. It's a great bit of art. There is beauty in the harsh lines.When you’re small in the city, people don’t see you, and loud sounds can scare you, and knowing what to do is sometimes hard. But this little kid knows what it’s like, and knows the neighborhood. And a little friendly advice can go a long way. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. The country is quiet and there were moments of mindfulness and the sublime found in unremarkable places. I suppose I am always trying to recapture those feelings. You have referred to a “rural mentality” that rejects the limelight or attention focused on an individual. How did that atmosphere affect you? Does it still inform your work as an illustrator and now as an author?

Art of the Picture Book An Interview with Sydney Smith — Art of the Picture Book

Like many other East-coast cities on this list, Providence started life as one of the oldest European settlements in the United States. Its Puritan roots start in 1636 and the link between history and charm is palpable in many areas of the city, particularly the East Side near the Providence River, where you’ll find the Old State House (1762), the First Baptist Church in America (1638) and many other impressive old buildings, such as Fleur-de-lys Studio. Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum is well worth a visit for its excellent collection of fine art from around the world, including pieces from Andy Warhol, Monet and Picasso. You’ll also find the Ivy League’s Brown University in Providence. the images do most of the talking. They range from modest vignettes of city life–a portion of wire fencing, a swatch of building–to showstoppers including a fractured illustration of the downcast boy’s funhouse-like reflection in a mirrored-glass skyscraper. . . . heartrending.”— Shelf Awareness, Starred Review JUDGES CITE ‘POWERFUL EMOTIONAL PUNCH’ DELIVERED BY TWO BOOKS THAT EXPLORE LIFE THROUGH A CHILD’S EYESSet in an urban setting with street cars and a maze of lights, streets and sounds, this picture book skillfully captures the confusion of the city. As the child moves through the space with confidence, readers will learn more about both the kid and their city along the way. Readers at first may think that the child is homeless or running away. It takes a little while for their lost pet to be revealed to the reader. Fortunately, the streetwise kid telling Sydney Smith’s atmospheric story has some advice for fellow kids negotiating a city: which alleys to use as shortcuts, and which to avoid; which trees to hide in and which houses to stand outside to hear music, be warmed by a hot air vent or even be given free fish. The use of line, reflection, and perspective masterfully evoke a bustling gray city, making this thoughtful book an artful choice.”— School Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW Every single town and city in USA has its own flavor. Each one presents a microcosm of community and character to the world, based on innumerable factors, with location, history and heritage all playing some of the most essential roles. When this balance of factors is just right, you get a uniquely charming place that can offer something to the visitor that’s well worth traveling for. But the United States has thousands of cities.