I talk like a river

Every morning when he wakes up, words appear on his lips. Words that get tangled in his throat. And what the child knows for sure is that it will be a new day of silence at school. At the back of the class, he always hopes that he will not be called on to answer, but when the teacher calls him to speak, everything gets twisted again and the eyes of his classmates laugh as they watch him stutter. And then, a quiet place: the course of the river chosen by his father to dispel anger and tears. And it is the ever-moving water that his father shows him that makes him realise that he speaks just like a river. In I Talk Like a River, Jordan Scott and Sydney Smith give voice to a moving, poetic, at times dramatic story centred on the ability to overcome difficulties (in this case a stutter). However, it would be reductive to say that it only deals with these topics. It talks about diversity, resilience, human relationships, parenting and the relationship between man and nature, which is often a lifeline in the most difficult days but also a game of mirrors that human beings should learn - or re-learn - to recognise and observe. And so it is that the river talks in the same gurgling, tumultuous, swirling and disruptive way as the young protagonist. In the book's forty-four pages, the illustrations accompany the reader at a slow pace and at times, like the child's words, broken up or - on the contrary - dilated in a silence that expresses their absence, or his attempt to overcome the resistance to express himself caused by his stuttering.    

Io parlo come un fiume (I talk like a river)
by Sydney Smith
Orecchio Acerbo, 2021