Me, Toma and the Concrete Garden

Andrew Larsen and Anne Villeneuve’s book, Me, Toma and the Concrete Garden, is a wonderfully well-executed story of friendship, community, and the importance of nature and its potential as a source for inspiration, healing, and bringing people together. The first-person narrator, Vincent, is staying with his Aunty Mimi while his mother convalesces. One day he sees a boy waving to him, and, with encouragement from his aunty, Vincent soon befriends the boy, Toma. Where the boys live, there is a garbage-strewn vacant lot surrounded by a crumbling brick wall on one side and a high chain link fence on the three other sides. The boys inadvertently create a garden by throwing dirt balls over the brick wall into the abandoned lot.

Villeneuve is a Governor General’s Literary Award-winning illustrator. The ink and watercolour illustrations for Me, Toma and the Concrete Garden subtly reflect the gradual conversion of the neighbourhood that provides the setting for the story. In the early illustrations, there is a sparse use of colour. These illustrations are predominantly grey, with a muted teal colour. However, there is an increasing use of brighter colours as the garden starts to bloom. Even in illustrations not showing the garden, there is more colour and vibrancy towards the end of the book. Nowhere in Larsen’s written text does he state that the community has become more colourful or vibrant. Yet, the illustrations make this obvious. It is a masterful marriage of the author and illustrator’s separate but combined crafts. This is an excellent picture book to demonstrate those distinct roles of the writer and artist. Each should contribute things that advance the story and add appeal to the book. Yet, both should mesh together seamlessly as if the one and the other are working side-by-side. In performing their various roles, Larsen and Villeneuve succeed wonderfully with Me, Toma and the Concrete Garden.

As one with an interest in the history of children’s literature, I was reminded by this book of the work of the incomparable Ezra Jack Keats. His urban settings and characters would fit neatly alongside the neighbourhood where Vincent and Toma become friends. For me, that is high praise, indeed.