The Words in Picture Books: I Talk Like a River

From now through May, because I’m teaching the Picture Book Intensive at VCFA, all my posts will focus on picture books.

Canadian poet Jordan Scott’s picture book, I Talk Like a River, 2021 Schneider Family Book Award winner, has been celebrated as a sensitive first-person account of a child struggle with a limitation that is all his, but that the world sees as strange and unnatural. Kirkus Reviews called the book “An astounding articulation of both what it feels like to be different and how to make peace with it.“

The first spread opens with a simple declaration:

I wake up/each morning

with the sounds of words/all around me

What do you do when words crowd your mind but you can’t get them out?

Here is a celebration of a single moment of connection between a child and father, between a child and the wild, swirling beauty of the natural world. That single moment transforms, illuminates the way forward, makes all things possible. A touching author’s note is included in back matter.

Listen to Scott and illustrator Sydney Smith in conversation with the wonderful Sylvia Vardell, professor and author of Poetry Aloud Here.