Author and illustrator duo mine a rich vein

Town Is by the Sea Joanne Schwartz Illustrated by Sydney Smith Groundwood Books Ages 5 to 9

Through repeated use of the childlike phrase “it goes like this,” Town Is by the Sea’s young narrator introduces us to life in a seaside coal-mining town, painting a picture of a sunny, tranquil summer day with an undertone of tension.

That tension comes, both in text and illustration, whenever the boy mentions his father, who is one of the men digging for coal under the sea. Not that this is a doom-and -gloom story. Far from it. There is no mention of possible cave-ins, or the dangers of breathing coal dust. Just a child’s recitation of facts: “When I wake up, it goes like this — first I hear the seagulls, then I hear a dog barking, a car goes by on the shore road, someone slams a door and yells good morning.” But by the time he gets out of bed and stands by the window, looking out to sea (and seeming vulnerable in his white underpants), he knows his father “is already deep down under that sea, digging for coal.”

Author Joanne Schwartz and illustrator Sydney Smith both live in Toronto, but both were born in Nova Scotia and their familiarity with that Maritime province permeates this picture book, set in the 1950s. When an advance copy crossed my desk a month or two ago (its publication date is April 1) and I gave it a quick read-through, it was immediately clear that this book is something special. The text is perfect, its voice true to the child narrator and its content evocative and guaranteed to connect with anyone who has ever been a child. The accompanying illustrations meld seamlessly with the text.

Smith works his magic with inky brush strokes, watercolour “and a bit of gouache.” The latter, I assume, is responsible for the heart-stopping effect of my favourite image: a two-page spread in which the narrator carries a bag of groceries home to his mother on a sunny day, when “the sea is sparkling.” The light on the water brought me to a standstill: It vividly evoked memories of similar scenes at seasides in my own experience.

But as warm and lovely as the scenes above ground, the ones below ground play themselves out under a hugely dark and oppressive blackness. Smith does a masterful job of conveying the weight of working under the sea by showing miners in a narrow strip below all that blackness — and, at one point, hinting that the boy’s father and a colleague are hurrying away from what appears to be a cavein.

It is with infinite relief that we eventually see the man’s shadow outside a door and are told: “At supper time, it goes like this — my father comes home from work.”

Still, when the boy drifts off to sleep that night, it is with the thought that one day he will be the one going down to the mine. And a brief author’s note at the end of the book reminds us that not long ago, even boys of high school age followed in their fathers’ footsteps. As such, this book — besides being a beautiful volume for parents to share with their offspring — has historical value in the classroom, where teachers might want to supplement it, for older students, with a recording of The Ballad of Springhill by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.

Together, they will spark conversation.