HCAA Winner for Illustration: Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith’s childhood “playing” with drawing became “serious” during his years studying for an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. After several years of poster and album cover design, he apprenticed as an illustrator of Sheree Fitch’s republished books of children’s poetry (2010–2012) and Jill Barber’s Music is for Everyone (2014). He moved to Toronto and soon received national and international recognition for the urban energy of his books such as Sidewalk Flowers in 2015 and Small in the City in 2019; both were recipients of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature — Illustrated Books. Small in the City  was also awarded the CILIP Greenaway Medal and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. Sidewalk Flowers, by JonArno Lawson, is a wordless book that follows the path of a little girl through the city and was selected by IBBY Canada as welcoming gift for Syrian refugees arriving in Canada. His illustrations for The White Cat and the Monk by Jo Ellen Bogart (2016), Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz (2017), and I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott (2020) have also earned accolades, including the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal in 2018 for Town Is by the Sea. He has received four New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books citations (2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019) and a New York Times Kids Notable (2018). In his illustrations, whether for a light-hearted story like Sidewalk Flowers or the more anguished story of a boy who stutters in I Talk Like a River, he is able to express complex and possibly unsettling emotions but also respect for the reader, whether child or adult, who feels those emotions. He uses a variety of techniques but most often ink and brush. Sydney Smith has since returned to Nova Scotia where he continues to seek and recapture “moments of the sublime found in unremarkable places”.

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Small in the City
Toronto, Canada: Groundwood Books, 2019, ISBN 978-1-7730-6198-6
New York, USA: Neal Porter Books, 2020, ISBN 978-0-8234-4261-4

Sidewalk Flowers, text by JonArno Lawson
Toronto, Canada: Groundwood Books, 2017, ISBN 978-1-5549-8431-2

The White Cat and the Monk, text by Jo Ellen Bogart
Toronto, Canada: Groundwood Books, 2016, 978-1-5549-8780-1

Town Is by the Sea, text by Joanne Schwartz
Toronto, Canada: Groundwood Books, 2017, 978-1-5549-8871-6

I Talk Like a River, text by Jordan Scott,
New York, USA: Neal Porter Books, 2020, ISBN 978-0-8234-4559-2