Monday, September 16th, 7 PM
We are thrilled to announce the arrival of Sydney Smith at Sullaluna NYC, 41 Carmine Street.
And with him will be one of the greatest experts in illustration and children’s literature: Leonard S. Marcus, whose friendship and support we are infinitely proud of.
Sydney has just won the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2024, the highest international recognition given to an author and illustrator of children’s books for his significant and lasting contribution to children’s literature.
Awarded every two years by IBBY, the Hans Christian Andersen Awards recognize lifelong achievement and the aesthetic and literary qualities of writing and illustrating as well as the ability to see things from the child’s point of view and the ability to stretch the child’s curiosity and imagination.
We warmly invite you to come meet this great artist in person and discover his magnificent books.
See you soon Sullaluna NYC!
On a good day magic happens. And I do fell a little bit like a magician. You just take a couple of words, a couple of pictures, put them together, then all of a sudden you have the power to entertain, to thrill, to make someone laugh, to make someone think and make someone fell. Picture books can be a safe place for readers to explore the whole spectrum of emotion. Sometimes you don’t have words for those emotions. You don’t know what to call them. That’s okay. In picture books there is no judgment, only understanding. Picture books speak to the essence of human existence. It’s a pretty big responsibility, but it’s true and I love it. A story about a kid in a mining town in Nova Scotia, Canada, can be read by a reader in Vietnam and fell the same thing, understand each other. This is the power of picture books. We can share our stories with each other because our stories are so similar.Sydney Smith
on an interwiew for The Canadian Children’s Book Centre
“In interviews, Smith has remarked that children return most often to books they find a little scary, ones that express emotions that unsettle them. There is something about slightly familiar, yet slightly unknown, feelings that the child is drawn to puzzle out and revisit — feelings one might almost call “adult,” perhaps of loss, heartbreak, or anxiety. I say one might almost call such feelings “adult” because, for Smith, picture books do not pose a separation between child and adult: they are about human experience and emotion, part of any and every age. Picture books constitute an intimate revelation by author and illustrator to the viewer — person to person, rather than adult to child.
These perceptions are the underpinnings of Smith’s genius and power as an illustrator — the expression of complex and possibly unsettling emotion, and respect for the reader/viewer as one who feels those emotions. They saturate his illustrations, both in stories that are lighter hearted, such as Sidewalk Flowers, and those that are anguished, such as I Talk Like a River. Through a judicious mix of expansive double spreads and multi-panelled pages; through images of fracture, reflection, and shadow; through colour and play with mixed media; and through his interpretation of place, Smith makes intense, complex feeling visible in a way that is exceptional in children’s illustration. His accomplishment in this makes him worthy of the Hans Christian Andersen Award.”
from the Illustrators Dossier for Illustrator Nominee
To know more about Sydnet Smith read the Full Dossier.
Some of the most important titles:
Do You Remember? by Sydney Smith (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, for ages 4–8)
Winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book Award! From the multiple award-winning creator of Small in the City and the illustrator of I Talk Like a River comes a fresh and moving look at memories, filtered through the mind of a child.
My Baba’s Garden by Jordan Scott, illus. by Sydney Smith (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, for ages 4-8)
A Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book! The bond between a child and his grandmother grows as they tend her garden together.
I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott, illus. by Sydney Smith (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, for ages 4–8)
Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book Award. 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.
Small in the City by Sydney Smith (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, for ages 4–8)
Winner of the Ezra Jack Keats Award and CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal. It can be a little scary to be small in a big city, but this child has some good advice for a very special friend in need.
See you soon!
SULLALUNA NYC independent bookshop & Italian bistrot
41, carmine Street 10014 New York NY
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