I Talk Like a River

by Jordan Scott, Sydney Smith (Illustrator)

Overview

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award
Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Winner


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
A Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book
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 Bank Street Best Childrens Book of the Year!
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
A CBC Best Picture Book of the Year
A Kids' Book Choice Award Finalist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823445592
Publisher:	Holiday House
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	42,672
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	480L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

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 is an illustrator of picture books whose work includes Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson; The White Cat and the Monk by Jo Ellen Bogart; and Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz, which was awarded the 2018 Kate Greenaway Medal and the 2018 Children's Literature Award. He both wrote and illustrated Small in the City, which Kirkus Reviews called "Extraordinary, emotional, and beautifully rendered." in a starred review. School Library Journal said "The use of line, reflection, and perspective masterfully evoke a bustling gray city." in another starred review. Travis Jonker of 100 Scope Notes, a School Library Journal blog, said "Small in the City is one of my favorite books of 2019." His accolades include two Governor General's Awards for Illustrated Children's Books and four successive New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of the Year citations.

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/13/2020

Sometimes a few words can transform a child’s life. In this autobiographical story by Canadian poet Scott (Night & Ox, for adults), a boy who stutters is given a new way to think about his speech. He describes words in his mouth and the anguish of his classroom: “All those eyes watching/ my lips/ twist and twirl,/ all those mouths/ giggling/ and laughing.” One “bad speech day,” his father picks him up from school and takes him to the quiet river, where they look for rocks and sit on the bank. “See how that water moves? That’s how you speak,” his father says. Following frustration-tinged spreads, Smith (Small in the City) zooms in on the boy’s face as he watches the river “bubbling, churning, whirling, and crashing.” He closes his eyes, taking in the words’ meaning, then ventures into the water, shown in a shimmering double gatefold. “This is what I like to remember,/ to help stop myself from crying/ I talk like a river.” Artwork makes the internal change a light-filled experience, an account of the moment in which the child experiences himself and his individual way of speaking as part of the great forces of the natural world. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. Illustrator’s agent: Emily Van Beek, Folio Jr./Folio Literary Management. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"A brilliant way of thinking about a stutter."—Ed Sheeran

"An empathetic conversation-starter for families seeking help for a young — or not so young — person who stutters."—The New York Times

"This wrenching and beautiful book will give succor to children who stutter and expand the hearts of those lucky enough to take fluency for granted." —The Wall Street Journal
 
"This important (and stunning) book promotes self-acceptance . . . as well as empathy" —The San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the most powerful books that I’ve read in 2020."—The Globe and Mail

★ "lyrical and empowering . . . An important and unforgettable offering presented with natural beauty and grace."—The Horn Book, Starred Review

★ "This is unquestionably one of the best picture books of 2020." —Book Page, Starred Review
 
★ "An astounding articulation of both what it feels like to be different and how to make peace with it."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
 
★ "By turns heartbreaking and illuminating, this picture book brings one more outsider into the fold through economy of language and an abundance of love."—School Library Journal, Starred Review
 
★ "Full of reassurance and understanding, this is a much needed look at a common language problem." —Booklist, Starred Review
 
★"a boy who stutters is given a new way to think about his speech. . . . Artwork makes the internal change a light-filled experience"—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

★ "In this moving, deeply personal . . . There is plenty for all readers to glean from this boy's 'proud river.'"—Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

★ " Smith’s watercolour imagery in the book’s early parts is soft and edgeless. . . . . It’s only when his dad takes him for a walk along the river that the art firms up. The pair are now framed by the darkly delineated silhouette of tree trunks while the crisp, subtle hues of autumn leaves are reflected in the water next to them."—Quill & Quire, Starred Review

"An exceptional work."—Toronto Star

"Deft poetic language pairs with the resonant watercolors of Sydney Smith to create a book that is more than a memoir and more than conveying a message. This is pain, turned into art, and written for young children. Incomparable."—A Fuse #8 Production

"A sensitive portrayal of the isolation and stigma felt by a kid with speech difficulties." —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

"Jordan Scott pulls from his own childhood experience to explore the way his father helped him accept his stutter and offers support for anyone who is differently abled."—BC BookLook
 
"From its sunlit, breathtaking cover illustration of a freckled boy immersed in a moving river to the lyrical text by a B.C. poet drawing on his childhood experiences growing up with a stutter, this is a book for all ages."—Montreal Gazette
 
"This is a stunning picture book."—Sal's Fiction Addiction

"Poet Jordan Scott gives us an empathetic picture book from the perspective of a boy who stutters.  . . . Sydney Smith's flowing images explain and enhance the text."—BookLoons

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2020

Gr 1–4—In first-person narration about the author as a boy, this debut brings readers into the world of dysfluency, that is, stuttering. The narrator, a white boy, sits alone at the kitchen table before school, imagining how badly his day will go, and it's even worse. The letters M, P, and C bring special terrors for the garbled sounds they demand of him in a school day, when the teacher asks students to describe a favorite place. His solitude is, for readers, almost unbearable until he returns to his understanding father. He knows about a "bad speech day," and takes his son to the river. There, without many words, he explains how his son talks like the river, with ebbs and flows, a rush of sounds, emotion, and meaning streaming. The boy's dawning realization brings the story to a resonant pause, in a foldout that opens to a vast four-page spread of the sparkling waters that surround him. And then the remembrance resumes, for when he returns to school, he talks about his special place in his own manner, his dysfluency making him and his telling unique. Smith's lyrical, color-saturated paintings capture mighty nature as well as the blurred, staring faces of schoolmates, who mock and laugh but mostly do not understand the main character's inner world. An author's note, in tiny type but very personal and expressive, outlines the journey Scott has taken to make peace with himself. VERDICT By turns heartbreaking and illuminating, this picture book brings one more outsider into the fold through economy of language and an abundance of love.—Kimberly Olson Fakih, School Library Journal

School Library Journal

★ 2020-06-30
A young boy describes how it feels to stutter and how his father’s words see him through “bad speech day[s].”

Lyrical, painfully acute language and absorbing, atmospheric illustrations capture, with startling clarity, this school-age child’s daily struggle with speech. Free verse emulates the pauses of interrupted speech while slowing down the reading, allowing the words to settle. When coupled with powerful metaphors, the effect is gut-wrenching: “The P / in pine tree / grows roots / inside my mouth / and tangles / my tongue.” Dappled paintings inspire empathy as well, with amorphous scenes infused with the uncertainty that defines both the boy’s unpredictable speech and his melancholy. Specificity arrives in the artwork solely at the river, where boy and father go after a particularly bad morning. Scenery comes into focus, and readers feel the boy’s relief in this refuge where he can breathe deeply, be quiet, and think clearly. At this extraordinary book’s center, a double gatefold shows the child wading in shimmering waters, his back to readers, his face toward sunlight. His father pulls his son close and muses that the boy “talk[s] like a river,” choppy in places, churning in others, and smooth beyond. (Father and son both appear White.) Young readers will turn this complex idea over in their minds again and again. The author includes a moving autobiographical essay prompting readers to think even further about speech, sounds, communication, self-esteem, and sympathy.

An astounding articulation of both what it feels like to be different and how to make peace with it. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews