Do You Remember? by Sydney Smith
CBC News | Posted: September 19, 2023 4:58 PM | Last Updated: October 13, 2023
A son and his mother revisit favourite memories
Tucked in bed at a new apartment, a boy and his mother trade favorite memories. Some are idyllic, like a picnic with Dad, but others are more surprising: a fall from a bike into soft piled hay, the smell of an old oil lamp when a rainstorm blew the power out.
Now it's just the two of them, and the house where all those memories happened is far away. But maybe someday, this will be a favorite memory, too: happy and sad, an end and a beginning intertwined.
In a series of warm and wistful vignettes, as achingly fleeting as childhood memories always become, Sydney Smith takes us into the mind of a young person processing a bevy of complex emotions during a major life change. Do You Remember? is a stirring meditation on holding fast to the best of the past, and choosing to believe in the future.
Now it's just the two of them, and the house where all those memories happened is far away. But maybe someday, this will be a favorite memory, too: happy and sad, an end and a beginning intertwined.
In a series of warm and wistful vignettes, as achingly fleeting as childhood memories always become, Sydney Smith takes us into the mind of a young person processing a bevy of complex emotions during a major life change. Do You Remember? is a stirring meditation on holding fast to the best of the past, and choosing to believe in the future.
(From Groundwood Books)
Do You Remember? is for ages 3 to 6.
Sydney Smith is a writer and illustrator from Halifax. Some of his other works include illustrating Town is by the Sea which won the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award in 2017 and the Kate Greenaway Medal, and Small in the City which he also wrote. Small in the City won the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Ezra Jack Keats Award.