A boy and his mother (both white) face each other on a bed. A closeup of their pillowed heads is accompanied by the words “Do you remember …” They recall a picnic in a field with an unexpected bounty of wild berries, a first attempt to ride a bike that ended with a tumble into a haypile, and the smell of an old oil lamp during a rainstorm power outage. The boy’s dad is in each of the memorys, including the one in which they are packing their belongings into a truck—an image shows his father handing the boy a stuffed bear and then waving goodbye as the boy and his mother drive off. As the dark room where the boy and mother lie gradually lightens, the focus shifts to their view from the bed: belongings stacked against the opposite wall, waiting to be unpacked. “Can we make this a memory, too? We could say: ‘Do you remember the first morning in our new home? It was just you and me. … And we weren’t worried or scared. We knew we were going to be just fine.’” The recent absence of the father is unstated but ever-present in a story with rich narrative description and detail, while the loving connection between mother and son promises a future of new shared family memories. Warm watercolor and gouache illustrations show the present clearly, while the memories are mostly snapshots edges softened by the distance of time. (Ages 4-8)

From the multiple award-winning creator of Small in the City and the illustrator of I Talk Like a River comes a fresh and moving look at memories, filtered through the mind of a child.

Tucked in bed at a new apartment, a boy and his mother trade favorite memories. Some are idyllic, like a picnic with Dad, but others are more surprising: a fall from a bike into soft piled hay, the smell of an old oil lamp when a rainstorm blew the power out.

Now it’s just the two of them, and the house where all those memories happened is far away. But maybe someday, this will be a favorite memory, too: happy and sad, an end and a beginning intertwined.

In a series of warm and wistful vignettes, as achingly fleeting as childhood memories always become, Sydney Smith takes us into the mind of a young person processing a bevy of complex emotions during a major life change. Do You Remember? is a stirring meditation on holding fast to the best of the past, and choosing to believe in the future.

Sydney Smith is the winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international distinction given to authors and illustrators of children's books.

A Charlotte Zolotow Highly Commended Title
A New York Times Best Children's Book of the Year
A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year
A Smithsonian Magazine Best Children's Book of the Year
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Chicago Public Library 'Best of the Best' Book
A Horn Book Fanfare Book
A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection