Small in the City

Product Information

From the 2021 CILIP Carnegie Medal shortlist: Run, Rebel by Manjeet Mann (Penguin Random House Children’s) We first see the child on a city bus. Departing the bus, the child walks through streets, hanging “Lost Cat” posters, and sharing recommendations as to where the missing cat should and shouldn’t go: There are dogs and dark alleys to avoid; a dryer vent under which a nap might be taken; a shop run by fishmongers who “would probably give you a fish if you asked.” Challenging myself is the primary goal of working. I cannot be excited about a project unless I challenge myself to take risks and work outside my comfort zones. I tend to start a project open and free and build up rules as I go. Most of my challenges are about breaking those fake rules. Or setting my goals and expectations so high that although I may never reach them I still achieve far more than I could before. The fake rules I impose are usually about materials I use or the way I pace the story or external expectations. For the next book, I play around with materials I haven’t tried before and a style that is different than I am used to. Thank you, Sydney, for sharing your work and your process! From The 2021 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal Shortlist: Starbird illustrated and written By Sharon King-Chai (Two Hoots)

When Amber runs, it’s the only time she feels completely free-far away from her claustrophobic home life. Her father wants her to be a dutiful daughter, waiting for an arranged marriage like her sister Ruby. The CILIP Carnegie Medal is awarded annually to a children’s book author whose writing creates an outstanding reading experience. It was established in 1936 in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919). The Kate Greenaway Medal, established in 1955, is named after the popular nineteenth century artist, known for her beautiful children’s illustrations and designs. The Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded annually to a children’s book illustrator whose artwork creates an outstanding reading experience. Royal National Institute of Blind People RNIB and Calibre Audio Library will be producing the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal shortlisted books in accessible formats (compatibility permitting), including braille, giant print and audio books. On a snowy day in a big city, a little boy hops off a streetcar and walks through downtown, between office buildings, through parks and down busy streets. Along the way, he provides helpful tips about which alleys make good shortcuts, which trees to climb and where to find a friendly face. All the while, the boy searches for what he has lost… 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.

Need Help?

Manjeet Mann’s debut novel Run, Rebel (Penguin Random House Children’s) and Sharon King-Chai’s Starbird (Two Hoots) take home the Shadowers’ Choice Awards from the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal shortlists respectively Ljubljana would probably be voted capital of the small cities if we put it to a global referendum. It is cute, historic, green, gabled, peaceful and foodie. Go in summer to cycle along the river and climb up to the castle, perched on a 375m hill east of the Old Town. Upscale Scottsdale is a city in its own right, albeit grafted onto the uncontrolled sprawl that is Phoenix, Arizona. It has Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter retreat and school, and good local wine, amazingly. Now was the time to sketch and build up reference material. I began the search for the authors and artists that brought out the right tone and perspective from me.

So I sat down, with the encouragement of my writing partner, Ben, and wrote down the story, and then over a month sketched out a dummy. As it has been in the past, I went about sketches the wrong way. I was too precious with some, building them up too much. Others were meant to be place holders, left unclear and required rethinking too late in the process. Congratulations to our 2021 Medal winners, to independent publishers Knights Of and Walker Books, to our Shadowers’ Choice winners,it’s such a wonderfully diverse range of stories and always exciting to see how engaged children and young people are in voting for their favourites. A huge thank you to those voters and to all the children, librarians and teachers who participated this year without whom the Medals would not be possible.” As a human, it got me thinking about the habitual thought patterns that lead us in certain directions, sometimes based on incorrect assumptions. Not all picture book illustrators write the story, nor do they need to. However, here is a book that essentially has a shared narrative in text and in illustration. At first it is unclear why the child, who I took to be a little boy, is travelling alone on public transport. It is a cold, dark, frightening city that he emerges into, rain lashes down, becomes sleet, becomes snow, but still the child marches on alone across traffic-heavy roads. He takes no notice of passers-by, and they ignore him. At first he appears to be about 4 years old, but is perhaps 8 or 9. Whatever, he’s a child alone. It may occur around the world but I have found there is a certain allergy to pride in the communities I grew up in. “Don’t get too big feelin’ ” translates to “Pride comes before a fall”. For the people of many rural communities, fortune is fleeting and not to be trusted. My grandmother often said “I didn’t ask for much and that’s just what I got”. It can be difficult at times to admit having goals and dreams. What’s even worse is when they come true.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. 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. A child braves strange streets in search of a mysterious someone in this gorgeous story about love and loss.”— People Magazine Discover Scottsdale Tours The Church of the Holy Trinity in Trinidad (Alamy) 11. Trinidad, Cuba (pop 73,000) A young child makes her way through a busy city in this lovely picture-book from Canadian author/illustrator Sydney Smith, offering a running narrative on what it is like to be small in such a large place. Describing what is to be seen, and how it makes a small being feel, offering advice on places to avoid and places to seek out, the narrative eventually concludes as the child puts up lost cat posters in the park, before making her way home, where her worried mother greets her. A sign of hope, vis-a-vis the missing cat, makes up the final scene of the book...