Small in the City

Written and illustrated by Sydney Smith

Groundwood Books

978-1-77306-198-6

40 pp.

Ages 4-7

September 2019

On October 2, the Canada Council for the Arts announced its finalists for the 2019 Governor General's Literary Awards, and Small in the City was one of the nominated titles for the English-language children's book illustration. This is Sydney Smith's fourth nomination–he and JonArno Lawson won in 2015 for Sidewalk Flowers (Groundwood, 2015)–and this one is all the more distinct as Small in the City is his first picture book as author and illustrator.

From Small in the City by Sydney Smith

Though the cover makes a young child who looks out of a streetcar window larger than life, minimizing the buildings reflected in the glass, Sydney Smith's illustrations show a child peripheral to the city. They look out over the streets of people doing and buildings standing. When they leave the streetcar, they are dwarfed by everything in the busy city. People march past looking at their feet or their phones. Sounds of taxis and car horns and construction and sirens are loud and scary. It's almost too much.

From Small in the City by Sydney Smith

But as the child ventures through the cold streets and snowflakes begin to fall, they know how to be a part of that city. They know which alleys to avoid and wonderful places to hide or climb or enjoy the steam from a dryer vent. As they walk from the busyness into a neighbourhood of trees and yards, local stores and houses, and a park, this child gives advice about where safety can be found. Soon enough the reader will observe that the child has posted salmon-pink notices to posts and fences and doors. The child may be small in the city but a lost cat is even smaller. Still, with the flurries becoming snow squalls with near whiteout conditions, the child reaches home, convinced that "You will be all right."

From Small in the City by Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith's artwork, created with ink, watercolour and gouache, journeys with the child from a dark-toned city centre through neighbourhoods infused with colour to a home blanketed in the lightness of peace and contentment. It's a Toronto of commerce and community, movement and stability, and this child lives in it and of it. They may be small but they are not insignificant and as they walk closer and closer to home, their presence becomes more meaningful.

Being small in the city is a perspective most adults have forgotten. It's seeing the heart of the city as it is, free of interpretation and expectation but infused with perception. As such, Small in the City is a story of a child for children and most certainly for those who have ever lost a pet. This could have been a sad story of loss and fear but Sydney Smith makes it one of resilience and hope, expectation and common sense. It's seeing shelter and warmth, food and comfort where adults might only see trees and shrubs, a dryer vent, the fishmonger and a church ledge. It's perspective as perception that makes Small in the City effusive in community and family and takes the reader from the obscurity to the light of home with its happy ending.

Ink Me: Seven The Series

Written by Richard Scrimger

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0016-8

224 pp.

Ages 10+

Release date October 10, 2012

Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy

Anticipation for Orca's upcoming Seven The Series has been growing since first announced earlier in the year and its enticing book trailer released in February.  If Ink Me, just one of the seven books set for simultaneous release on October 10, 2012, is any indicator, all young readers will be hooked instantly.

Bunny (a.k.a. Bernard) is just one of seven grandsons who, upon the death of their grandfather, receive a letter and instructions about a task to perform.  At 15, Bunny is the youngest of the grandsons but he may be the most challenged, living with a mental disability.  Regardless, Bunny is a very astute young man, understanding far more than many, even if Bunny believes that,

"they all reddy no Im a dummy." (pg. 3)

And Ink Me is all about how people, places, objects, situations - everything - are perceived and how these perceptions, right or wrong or misunderstood, affect everything else.

Bunny's task is to go to a particular tattoo parlour where they have been instructed to give him a specific tattoo.  The tattoo of the number 15 with a candle doesn't strike Bunny as anything special or too unusual; after all, he turned 15 on his most recent birthday.  But, the reader soon realizes, even if Bunny does not, that the tattoo that he sports indicates that he is part of the 15 Street gang and that he has made one kill.

When Bunny defends a skinny gang member, Jaden, from a beating by a member of a rival gang, the Angels, he is introduced to other members of 15 at the gym where they hang out.  Being white, Bunny is an oddity within the gang but his tattoo and surprising knowledge, albeit naively, of gang members with whom 15 is making a deal, gives him some credibility.  For the first time, Bunny is enjoying the camaraderie of friends, particularly Jaden.  Moreover, Morgan, a former pro fighter who now runs the gym, recognizes that Bunny could be a great fighter, with his fast reflexes and the moves his grandfather had taught him, and Morgan starts training him.

Although enjoying the benefits of his new friendships, Bunny also must withstand the negatives associated with being a part of 15, though he does not always recognize these drawbacks as such.  Even after being hauled away with the gang by the police and interrogated about "the deal" and later chased and shot at by a rival gang, Bunny continues to see everything as a new experience and himself under the care of his friends.  The line between the good guys and the bad guys continues to get blurred for Bunny as the deal between 15 and two other gangs is brokered.

Richard Scrimger, one of my favourite Canadian authors, is brilliant at telling a story without any lessons creeping in to weigh down the plot; that is, until the last few pages of the book are turned.  Readers will be too engrossed in the upshot of Bunny's honesty and incomprehension to realize that Ink Me exposes the vulnerability of perceptions to misinterpretation.  Whether it be the tattoo that marks Bunny as a gang member, or Jaden acting one way but in reality being someone else, or how guns are bad except when they're useful, these matters are all vulnerable to misperception.  Even Bunny's mom, a philosophy professor, has a hard time believing what Bunny tells her, instead reading situations as she chooses or as she is accustomed.  Though writing as Bunny must have been an arduous task for Richard Scrimger, as the text is so laden with spelling and grammatical mistakes, the author provides a real example of the dangers of "misreading."  I had to remind myself constantly that "no" in Bunny's text is "know" for me, and that I had to read carefully in order that I not let my prejudices alter the text's meaning.  Ink Me is a brilliant story, less about gangs and tattoos than about our relationships with others and the roles misunderstanding and perspective play in securing or destroying the integrity of those connections.