Sydney Smith’s 2019 picture book Small in the City is sad and beautiful.
It starts with several wordless pages. Some are blurry, and the color scheme is largely black, white, and gray. Readers follow a child, first a portrait silhouette against a bus window, then a more realized and colorful full body view of the child walking through a city. With more colors come words, though it isn’t clear at first if the kid is talking or if someone is talking about the kid and what it is like to be small in the city.
The kid walks on and the narration continues, talking about living in the city, what is passed or seen, and, increasingly, what the person talked to should or shouldn’t do. Warnings increase as the day gets snowier, until eventually, the narration shifts a bit, mentioning a friend and the possibility of sitting on a lap and getting petted. Soon after, an image shows the child getting something after their bag, and the next shows a poster about a lost cat.
There’s a blast of snow, and, at least on my part, a rush of understanding and sympathy. When the kid mentions a food dish being full and a blanket warm, I ached for the child, and marveled at Smith’s story. This is a story about a child who very much knows what it is like to be small in a city. A child who connects with their cat in part because they are both small in the loud and threatening grown-up world. A child who has found love it their cat, and lost it. And is worried sick about the cat being out in the snow.
The last image is paw prints in the snow. The cat is alive and on the move. Judging by the brick walls in the background, it is very close to home. It might make it home…
Beautiful. Touching. A sad love poem in words and images. There’s a reason this book won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2021 (a British award for “distinguished illustration” in a children’s book).
