Name: I Talk Like a River
ISBN: 9781406397222

Jordan Scott

View more details of this book at www.walkerbooks.com.au

I Talk Like a River

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Winner What if words got stuck in the back of your mouth whenever you tried to speak? What if they never came out the way you wanted them to? Sometimes it takes a change of perspective to get the words flowing. A New York Times Best Children's Book of the Year I wake up each morning with the sounds of words all around me. And I can't say them all . . . When a boy who stutters feels isolated, alone, and incapable of communicating in the way he'd like, it takes a kindly father and a walk by the river to help him find his voice. Compassionate parents everywhere will instantly recognize a father's ability to reconnect a child with the world around him. Poet Jordan Scott writes movingly in this powerful and ultimately uplifting book, based on his own experience, and masterfully illustrated by Greenaway Medalist Sydney Smith. A book for any child who feels lost, lonely, or unable to fit in. Finalist for the BC and Yukon Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize An American Library Association Notable Children’s Book ILA Primary Fiction Honoree Named a Best Book of the Year by The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Shelf Awareness, Bookpage, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, and more! A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of the Year A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection A Bank Street Best Childrens Book of the Year! A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year A CBC Best Picture Book of the Year A Kids' Book Choice Award Finalist

renee badenoch

This book was perfect. On it's surface it's a simple story that in the hands of a lesser writers and illustrators would be trite or didactic. A boy with a stutter goes to school and can't talk; his dad picks him up from school, and seeing that he has had a bad day, takes him to the river to cheer him up. At the river, his father says, "You talk like a river" and that image cheers the boy up. 

The first thing that elevates this book is the language: rich, sumptuous, emotional language. Describing the way language causes him to stumble the boy says, "The M in moon dusts my lips with a magic that makes only mumble" and the juxtaposition of the way words fly through his mind and flow in the language of the book with his inability to speak makes the reader feel a frustration and hearbreak that mere descriptions of stuttering couldn't. The book has a rhythm... but it halts, then moves in quick bursts; it circles back on itself, it becomes slow, deliberate. The language of the book echoes the flow of the river, giving an aural understanding of what it means to "talk like a river" and a dignity to the comparison.

The art in this book is phenomenal. Just like the text shows the way language shapes the boy's world, the imagery in the book mirrors the boy's internal perception of the world. In one scene where the boy is asked to speak in class and cannot make out the words, the paintings become blurred to the point of abstraction, and the loose shape of the classroom and the boy's laughing classmates appear only as haze. It strikes the reader both as if they are seeing the room through a scrim of the boy's tears, and also reinforces the way that his world is shaped by words and becomes immaterial when he cannot outwardly make the words that he shapes his world with. 

Near the end of the book the text says, "I look at the river. Bubbling, whirling, churning, and crashing". Their is no text on a two page spread of the boy silent and thinking. The spread can be opened to create a four page spread of the boy wading in the river, saying "My dad says I talk like a river." The river is beautiful, changing, dappled with light. The boy's figure is blurred at the edges, but he is not drowning, but standing still as the water (and the words that shape his world) surround him. 

I highly recommend.

Caroline Lewicki

This book is absolutely stunning. I love the message of accepting who you are and accepting that your disability is a part of who you are. The illustrations are beautiful and the words are incredibly powerful.