Small in the big city tells the story of a special journey that a child makes through a big city. A journey that starts a bit sad and ominous, but gradually evokes more light and confidence. It is the first time that the award-winning Canadian illustrator Sydney Smith (1980) has provided both the text and the illustrations for a picture book, which immediately produces a beautiful result, where text and image go together perfectly. They tell this story about loneliness, missing, the capriciousness of the city and ultimately about trust in yourself and each other.
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Silhouette
The child – as a reader we do not know whether it is a boy or a girl – travels alone by public transport. In four cartoon format pictures we see the silhouette sitting back against the edge of the frame. The child is in a tram. The world behind the window is shown in color, vaguely, but the subway clearly runs through a busy city with skyscrapers, busy intersections and traffic jams. Then the point of view changes and we look into the tram from the sidewalk. We see the child wearing a winter hat next to the other passengers. We can see through two windows, through which we can see across the street. At the same time, we see the city’s flats looming in the reflection of the glass. It is an incomparably handsome depth illustration in wax crayons, watercolors and ink, which seems to have been set up off the cuff. A characteristic of Smith, because also in the picture book I talk like a river by Jordan Scott about a boy who stutters, it could be seen that Smith allows his prints to come about partly organically, but not without direction or research. There, for example, he had materials collide with each other to add extra force to the story about a stuttering boy.
Also read the review of I talk like a river, which Sydney Smith previously illustrated: Stuttering is talking like water moves
The illustrations of Small in the big city each time divide the space on the page view differently. It starts out as a fairly cartoon-like set-up of frames, but is gradually broken up with full-page prints and even an image that continues over two pages.
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The sparse text never misses its target. The child guides us through the city. It has stepped off the tram and is now moving through the streets: ‘You sometimes find a shorter route through an alley. But I wouldn’t take this alley. It’s too dark.’ The city is overwhelming, but the child knows the way and is not panicked. It observes and concludes: ‘In this garden there are three large dogs chasing each other and biting at each other. I would avoid that place.’
Self-sustainability
At first it is not entirely clear what the child is doing and to whom it is addressing. Does it speak to us, or to itself? However, the text goes from grim to jovial. It has started to snow, the pages are getting whiter and whiter. “The fishmongers down the street are nice, they’ll probably give you a fish if you ask.” And: ‘I know you like listening to music. Someone who always plays the piano lives in the blue and white house down the street.’ The child knows the neighbourhood, the street.
Only just before the end do we see the child putting up a poster. A cat is missing. “If you want, you can just come back.” This is how the story works towards the finale. The child has now arrived home and crawled into his mother’s arms. ‘But I know you. You’ll be fine.’ These last sentences could just as well be about the lost cat as about the child who misses him. It’s a nice ending to this picture book about anonymity and self-reliance. Small in the big city is such a rare work in which everything falls into place: a sparse but impressive text, breathtaking images in a story with an original message in which you sense necessity.