My Baba’s Garden by Jordan Scott & illustrated by Sydney Smith

 

My thoughts:  A gentle story of multi-generational love and caring. The Baba (grandmother) whose early life was one of deprivation and lack of food, lives simply growing and cooking her own food and does so in abundance. She helps care for her grandson. Through her actions she demonstrates her way of life and how she tends her garden and cooks the food she grows. She even captures earthworms on rainy days and places them in her garden. This demonstrates a care for the little things that make a garden grow.

As she ages and needs to be removed from her own home, she goes to live with her family. Her grandson returns much of the love and tenderness to her that she has previously bestowed on him.

A sweet tender story that is lovely and beautifully told.

About the book: 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.

DISCLOSURE: I was provided a copy to facilitate a review. Opinions are mine, alone and are freely given.