My Baba's Garden

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). He visits her every day and finds her hidden in the steam of boiling potatoes, a hand holding a beetroot, a leg opening a cupboard, an elbow closing the fridge, humming like a night full of bugs when she cooks. This is a stunning ode to the special relationship between grandmother and grandchild, needing few words, but rooted deeply in ritual, touch and feeling.

Jordan Scott is a poet whose work includes Silt, Blert, Decomp and Night & Ox. Blert, which explores the poetics of stuttering, is the subject of a National Film Board of Canada project: Flub and Utter: a Poetic Memoir of the Mouth. Scott was the recipient of the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for his contributions to Canadian poetry. The award-winning I Talk Like a River was his first book for children.

Sydney Smith has illustrated multiple children’s books, including the Kate Greenaway-shortlisted I Talk Like a River, Small in the City and Town Is by the Sea, which both won the Kate Greenaway Medal and Footpath Flowers, which was a New York Times Children’s Book of the Year and a winner of the Governor General Award for Illustration. Find him online at www.sydneydraws.ca and on Twitter and Instagram as @sydneydraws.