My Baba's Garden
Description
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.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Praise for My Baba's Garden
★ "Together, Scott and Smith create a portrait of a love which needs few words."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
★ "Scott’s poetic sensibilities distill the days into meaningful moments and images, sometimes captured in similes. . . . Smith’s warm gouache-and-watercolor scenes are filled with gentle gestures and connection. . . . A quiet, tender, and profoundly moving celebration of intergenerational love."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
★ "Share this heartfelt testament to family widely."—Booklist, Starred Review
★ "A beautiful tale of family and the love shared between a child and grandparent. . . . Gorgeous illustrations brim with emotional use of dappled light and color. . . . This is outstanding storytelling in a marvelous picture book that deserves a place in all collections. . . . This intergenerational story will provide young people with an opportunity to share those special bonds they have with an older person and hopefully encourage them to reflect on the simple acts that connect one generation to the next."—School Library Journal, Starred Review
"Heart-tugging. . . . Smith is an illustrator well suited to capturing a nonverbal bond. As in I Talk Like a River, his dense watercolor and gouache art has a shimmery, textured richness. . . . My Baba's Garden hints at themes like immigration, poverty, loss and the end of life, but the narrative works beautifully at its most basic level: it's a love letter from a grandchild to a grandparent."—Shelf Awareness
