I Talk Like a River

An astounding articulation of both what it feels like to be different and how to make peace with it.

Full of reassurance and understanding, this is a much needed look at a common language problem. 

Lyrical and empowering . . . An important and unforgettable offering presented with natural beauty and grace.

Sometimes a few words can transform a child's life. In this autobiographical story by Canadian poet Scott (Night & Ox, for adults), a boy who stutters is given a new way to think about his speech. He describes words in his mouth and the anguish of his classroom: "All those eyes watching/ my lips/ twist and twirl,/ all those mouths/ giggling/ and laughing." One "bad speech day," his father picks him up from school and takes him to the quiet river, where they look for rocks and sit on the bank. "See how that water moves? That's how you speak," his father says. Following frustration-tinged spreads, Smith (Small in the City) zooms in on the boy's face as he watches the river "bubbling, churning, whirling, and crashing." He closes his eyes, taking in the words' meaning, then ventures into the water, shown in a shimmering double gatefold. "This is what I like to remember,/ to help stop myself from crying/ I talk like a river." Artwork makes the internal change a light-filled experience, an account of the moment in which the child experiences himself and his individual way of speaking as part of the great forces of the natural world. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. Illustrator's agent: Emily Van Beek, Folio Jr./Folio Literary Management. (Sept.)

Copyright 2020 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Gr 1-4—In first-person narration about the author as a boy, this debut brings readers into the world of dysfluency, that is, stuttering. The narrator, a white boy, sits alone at the kitchen table before school, imagining how badly his day will go, and it's even worse. The letters M, P, and C bring special terrors for the garbled sounds they demand of him in a school day, when the teacher asks students to describe a favorite place. His solitude is, for readers, almost unbearable until he returns to his understanding father. He knows about a "bad speech day," and takes his son to the river. There, without many words, he explains how his son talks like the river, with ebbs and flows, a rush of sounds, emotion, and meaning streaming. The boy's dawning realization brings the story to a resonant pause, in a foldout that opens to a vast four-page spread of the sparkling waters that surround him. And then the remembrance resumes, for when he returns to school, he talks about his special place in his own manner, his dysfluency making him and his telling unique. Smith's lyrical, color-saturated paintings capture mighty nature as well as the blurred, staring faces of schoolmates, who mock and laugh but mostly do not understand the main character's inner world. An author's note, in tiny type but very personal and expressive, outlines the journey Scott has taken to make peace with himself. VERDICT By turns heartbreaking and illuminating, this picture book brings one more outsider into the fold through economy of language and an abundance of love.—Kimberly Olson Fakih, School Library Journal

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission