I am deeply honored to receive this award. I feel profoundly grateful to the committee for recognizing this book. It has been an arduous journey that I would have thought impossible were it not for my editor, Neal Porter.

At times like these, it feels appropriate to look closely at what we do and why. What could possibly bring someone to make a picture book? Why would you want to sit down to write and illustrate a book for children? Well, as it turns out, there are many valid reasons.

Maybe you are a fan of nostalgia. The books we have read and the stories that have shaped us have stayed with us forever. Each of us has a personal favorite that deserves to be retold and repackaged, rephrased, and reimagined to inspire children now as they have inspired us when we were young.

Maybe you are fan of childhood; you are here for the children in their mystical time of youth. You wish to be of service to the youngest of us, the most innocent, the most curious, and by far the most marvelous. To protect and inform those who will take our place and be our betters.

Maybe you are a fan of children’s books as an art form. Their history is deeply embedded in culture and an essential touchstone in every enlightened society. Their physical perfection is forever satisfying to the senses. They are a transcendent experience contained in a compact stack of pulp and ink, intrinsically appealing to our artistic sensibilities. There are no batteries, no screen, just a thin, flat object containing unlimited potential.

Or, it’s the community that brought you here, forever curious and tirelessly supportive. Those who strive to be better with everything they do. A community that is fueled by extreme positivity and endless energy, constantly ready to lift and celebrate, and do it all again tomorrow. No matter the person or the project, the goal is to educate, entertain, and inspire readers. To receive that elusive and sincere blessing that is the rapt attention of children and the support of fellow creators is to be profoundly validated.

Or perhaps you find yourself making picture books because you are a child yourself. You haven’t lost contact with the child you were because it’s still you. Sure, you can drive and own a house, but the You then is the You now. Many of us can access the fears and fascinations we had as children because we know, past the tired eyes and aching bones, that nothing has really changed. We navigate through the same emotional jungles as we did when we were young. We have the same fundamental essence within us.

I, for one, identify with this concept. I am that boy, and that boy is me. But if we are the same, how could that be possible? For many of us, so much time has passed that every cell in our body has been replaced many times over. This is the ship of Theseus. The paradox that asks: if every nail, plank, and beam is replaced, is it still the same ship? Are we really the same person as we were when we were young?

According to the French philosopher Diderot, the gateway to our own identity is in our memory. Diderot said, “It is only in memory that we are the same person for others and for ourselves. At the age I am now, there is probably not a single molecule of my body that I had when born.”

It is memory that keeps us who we are. Our self-portraits are rendered and tinted with the pigments of our past.

If our personal memories are what connect us to ourselves, then it’s the memories we share that keep us connected to those we know and love. These experiences — the stories of us — are what bind us together.

When I was young, I experienced a sort of hasty nostalgia as many children do, asking to be told the Story of Us, the story of me, my parents, and my family. I would ask, “Tell me the story of when I was born” or “tell me about the time we got lost in Toronto” or “tell me the story of when I fell off the horse.”

Those memories at bedtime were requested because there is a comfort in hearing the Story of Us. These shared memories could not be taken away, even as the world around me was so unsure and undefined, unsteady, and unpredictable. The threat of change is constant and inevitable. It surrounds us and weighs us down, keeping us anchored and anxious. But tell me a story of something we’ve done before, something we’ve lived through together. A time that didn’t break us, because we had each other.

Do You Remember? began when I recognized that I had an opportunity to visually represent memory. An ethereal human experience that is so universal yet is forever hidden in each of us. Memories are like precious beach glass that we carry in our pockets, yet we can never show them to each other, we can only describe their qualities. Children begin holding on to those precious lifelong memories around the age of five. Before then, I assume they mostly throw all of those memories back.

As an author, I saw the opportunity to speak about memories to children just as they were beginning to collect them. I also wanted to introduce the concept of creating your own memory. In the book I suggest that with agency and intent, you can command your mind to safely file away the present moment. It can be revisited later just by taking stock of the many senses that inform a memory, saying to yourself, “I will remember this…” and into your pocket it goes.

I also wanted to explore my own memories of my parents’ divorce. I felt required to do so because as soon as I started to write, using my own memories as reference, I found that I could not alter a single memory to exclude this impactful event that had such a profound influence on everyone in my family. The memories of the time my mother calls the “Great Upheaval” are dark and confused. They are filled with powerlessness and frustration. But if I excluded those memories from the book, I would be denying who I was. Those memories are my connection to my past self and to my family, especially my mother, to whom I was close during that time.

This book was written for adults as well as children. I try not to write with a specific target age in mind. I don’t know who will be reading my books and what they bring to it and take away; all I can confidently say is that children and adults read books together. They are sharing a time and space, hearing the words, seeing the images, internalizing the story at the same time. As mundane as this sounds, it contains such magic and mystery that it can overwhelm anyone attempting to facilitate this sacred act. And it is a sacred and intimate gesture of love. And we, as picture book creators, are an essential part of it. We provide the reason to sit closer, the excuse for tenderness and a connection that is predicated on a shared experience.

This book was also a message for my own mother and father; an answer to the question that every parent wants to ask their own child. What will you remember? During times of darkness and doubt, uncertainty and insecurity, what will you take away? How will it shape you? What will you carry with you for the rest of your life?

My answer will always be: I remember love. Unconditional love. That is what I choose to carry with me. That is what has shaped the best parts of me. A love that was not uprooted by storms, but reinforced by its limitless strength.

Someday, in the future, we can tell the Story of Us now, in the great upheaval of our time, and it will give us hope as we remember how we persevered because we are strong and we survived because of the warmth and safety we provided each other.

Let it be the love that we remember.

[Read Horn Book reviews of the 2024 BGHB Picture Book winners.]

From the January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2024 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB24. Read more from The Horn Book by and about Sydney Smith.