Jon Arno Lawson (text/concept), Sydney Smith (illus), Footpath Flowers, Walker Books, 1 August 2015, 32pp., $24.95 (hbk). ISBN 978-1-4063-6208-4
This is a wordless picture book illustrated by Sydney Smith from a concept of Jon Arno Lawson.
The book opens with a sepia full-page illustration with the only real splash of colour being the red of a little girl’s coat. On the next page a yellow dandelion is introduced. By this stage we know that the little girl is walking with her father through city streets. As she walks she gathers different flowers along the way, flowers which cling to cracks in a railway bridge, between paving stones and against buildings. The child is more engaged with the world around her than her father who spends much of his time on his mobile phone. Even when he is not talking, he is less aware of his surroundings than the little girl who starts to give away the flowers she has found. She lays one on a dead bird; another she gives to a man sleeping on a park bench and yet another she tucks into the collar of a dog outside a shop. These small gestures symbolically transform the world around her, a change signified by the increasing use of colour in the illustrations until they (and the world!) are in full colour. When she and her father get home, the child hugs her mother, walks through her house and garden until, tucking a flower behind her ear, she walks into the endpaper. This final endpaper reproduces the opening one which is covered in flowers and birds but the final one has the addition of the little girl walking through it as through a meadow of flowers.
This is a charming book which pays tribute to the world of a small child, a child’s perception and imagination. It will work well as a book to share with a child who can take part in discussing the unfolding narrative. The illustrations, while focusing on the child in her red coat, all have other points of visual interest. The layout is varied and interesting, from double-page spreads to pages with small, cartoon-type illustrations. These smaller ones extend the narrative and focus on one aspect such as the child’s hand picking a dandelion.
Recommended.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel