Sydney Smith is an award-winning children's book illustrator from Nova Scotia.

He won the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for children's literature — illustrated books for his wordless picture book Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson.

His picture book Town Is by the Sea, written by Joanne Schwartz, won the $50,000 2018 TD Canadian Children's Literature Award — the richest for Canadian kids literature — awarded annually to the creators of one book for readers up to the age of 12.

Smith's latest is Small in the City, a picture book he wrote and illustrated about a young boy who is on the hunt for a precious item he has lost on a snowy day in a big city.

Small in the City won the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — illustration.

In 2017, the award-winning illustrator talked to CBC Books about the stories that he'd love to illustrate.

"I was deep into these choose your own adventure books when I was young. I would never read them properly. If I turned to page 36 and found that I took a wrong turn and the evil necromancer killed me, I would just go back and take the other option. (But what are you supposed to do, die? And just close the book for good?)

"But I was drawing A LOT at that time and the illustrations inspired many of my own drawings. It was about being lost in the details of something that didn't exist. The way a dragon's neck would curl or how a giant's shadow would be cast on the side of a mountain. That level of transportation was only limited by my imagination. That's why I started drawing and that's why I still draw."

"As I grow older I still appreciate fantasy, but I get tired of the muscular warrior, the grumpy dwarf and the buxom elf. This book still has the mystery and magic, but takes the reality of it to another level. The main characters aren't battling an enemy of unfathomable wickedness with powers of dark magic. It's more about their relationship and living with past regrets. Ishiguro takes a convention and adds a level of reality to it. It's not about the barbarian's perfect body and the feats of strength. Now it's more about the character's blemishes and weaknesses that make the fantastic elements more real. If I were to illustrate this book, I would do the same."

"I have been living in Toronto for three years and I'm still new here. I tell people I just moved here. I'm not sure when that will change but reading books set in Toronto helps. Another thing that helps is setting my books in Toronto. Sidewalk Flowers, the first book I illustrated in this city, is so Toronto. It has everything but the CN Tower and Drake. This book has the fantasy of talking dogs mixed with reality of survival, death and the search of happiness. It's the same equation.

"Fantasy + practical reality = good reading."

"I have been a longtime fan of Neil Gaiman's work since a friend in high school loaned me some Sandman anthologies. It's a complicated relationship I have with Gaiman's works. The closer an author gets to writing something I would write myself the harder I am on them. I feel like Neil Gaiman and I were best friends in Grade 5, carrying around binders of lined paper, drawing writing and reading about mythology and fantasy."

"Chiang's sci-fi short stories take the practical treatment of an unreal premise to such an extent its almost self-indulgent. But that's a good place to be. I guess it's like being so good at your job, its threatening to others who just look at it. Tower of Babylon was the first story of his I read and it's stuck in my head. Maybe because I've been building towers out of blocks for my nine month old to destroy.

"Growing up, my mother and stepfather were, and continue to be, ministers. I may have seen too much behind the scenes to ever feel like the church is for me and I may disagree with some of what the Bible preaches, but I love mythology of all religions. Christianity is no exception. Chiang's story is not just about injecting a realism into a myth, it's about choosing how to introduce those elements in a way that makes it seems so normal. The Tower of Babel is built so high that the characters climb past the sun, past the stars and the planets but it is described in such way it makes complete sense. To draw like that would be to make the imaginary real by focusing on the real details, not the fantasy."

"At the risk of being nepotistic, I would love to illustrate something my sister has written. I am a huge fan of her poetry. But I'm also coming at it from a unique angle. She writes about our region and our family in ways that remind me that even though we shared a youth together we experienced things independently. Not many people get the opportunity to glimpse into the mind and memories of someone you've known your whole life."