I have written about Lauren Soloy before, though I could never write enough. I wrote about the first book of hers I knew and loved, When Emily Was Small, and about Etty Darwin and the Four Pebble Problem (I still think that’s a stupendous title), and about her illustrated version of the glorious I’s the B’y, and about The Hidden World of Gnomes. I could share her beautiful books forever– because the fact is that you’re not going to go wrong with a book she’s touched. Art and writing are always right out of her, and what she creates comes from her soul and from her skill, joined.

But I don’t think I’ve ever written in praise of Lauren. It’s an occupational hazard of talking about books: if you say nice things about the creator as a person, well, maybe that’s going to undercut what you say about the book because everyone knows that if you like a person you’ll never criticize them, right?

It’s a stupid line of thought and I’ll stop right there.

Never wait to cherish a life, I titled this, and for a reason.

It was around the first time I was chatting online with Lauren, and praising her work, that I learned she was recovering very well from, and, everyone thought, had really overcome, a round of fairly early cancer. I was very quietly happy and thrilled to watch her strength and work building back up: always exploring, posting new illustrations, often small and always vivid, of trees or flowers, and suddenly these little acorn-looking people, making me hope for gnomes… thank Lord we got those delightful gnomes! Giving those gnomes a shape and a space was the kind of lovely thing that’s distinctively “Lauren” in my eyes.

And then came the time I was hoping for, most of all: we were going to Canada, going to Newfoundland– maybe I could meet her in Nova Scotia! Long story short: we didn’t meet, it just didn’t work, and I will never not regret that. (I could say, “I should have…” but I don’t think Lauren would like that.) And, another regret, even though I nearly bought the delightful Woozles out of stock of her books, I never did post my roundup of Canadian bookshops from that trip! I still hope to. I still have the pictures. Why did I ever wait?

And now Lauren’s cancer is back, Stage 4, and hopes for “but we’ll go back– I’ll see her next time,” are in the “unlikely in the extreme” category of life plans. But here’s the thing. I could very easily, being who I am, be really angry with myself about that. Self-recrimination is part of me. But the part of me that’s thinking of Lauren rather than myself won’t let me cast blame because that’s just not how Lauren works.

And even if I’ve never met her in person, and even if I hadn’t had the lovely gift of correspondence with her, I’d still know that from her books. So why separate praise of the book from praise of the person?

Yes, yes, works have a life beyond their author, but they “do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are,” says my boy John Milton, and I’ve learned a lot from Lauren’s soul, beautiful both in her and in her books. And the books are so deeply reflective of something right in her soul and spirit, so far as I’ve been able to come to know her through our chats.

Lauren doesn’t put herself forward, but she is honest. Her books are gentle enough to pass muster with the adult guardians whose hands the books must pass through to reach the real readers– kids. And yet they are direct and uncondescending. She deals with hard things. Emily Carr had a tough childhood and she doesn’t disguise that at all. Charles Darwin is a listening father, but he made mistakes. “I’s the B’y” is something else books often disguise but Lauren refuses to: joy. Every one of those elements is something adults can find really hard to grasp. We shy away from the hard stuff, sadness and anger and joy, so very often. Lauren looks it in the eye and puts it into her books.

What a gift– a gift to be cherished.

I’m reminding myself of these things now. Things can be hard and beautiful and wild at the same time, as in When Emily Was Small. You can be a good parent and make mistakes. And don’t fail to grasp joy with both hands!

And every little personality in The Hidden World of Gnomes is so odd, so strange, so entirely beautiful. The worlds of Lauren’s books are and always have been and continue to be peopled with the small, the fierce, the bright-eyed, and the wild.

I think it would be easy to do a quick “does it pass muster” reading (you know how grownups do that at bookstores and libraries?) and see the gentleness or even cuteness in her books without the soul. I call that not a bad thing; it will let the books reach the kids who have a quicker spirit and apprehend the reductiveness of Emily’s mother in scolding her, and, also Emily’s resilience in the face of it all.

But tonight I was having a little cry because I was just so gutted about this blasted cancer. And the Spriggan saw and asked why I was sad and I snuffled inelegantly and told him that my friend was very sick. And he asked who, and I said it was Lauren who made beautiful books. And I promised to read him one at bedtime.

This was the first time I had read him When Emily Was Small (he’s on the young end for it) and you know what? It struck me fully that Lauren Soloy is a genius for this kind of writing. The art almost goes without saying for Lauren; that quick flick through one of her books will show you the artistic skill in a heartbeat: thumpety-bump! In her own way, with her own skills and area of work, she has a wild yet tender deftness, capturing voice, personality, and atmosphere, equivalent in power to Emily Carr’s own.

But to give the story of a fleeting moment– not a full biography, which is often the death of picture book biographies– a moment which, in its very smallness captures an honest essence that can reflect something to the child reader, be an independent story, and also illuminate the person represented on a bigger scale… I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else do that quite like Lauren. Moments aren’t pushy and Lauren isn’t pushy. But when you read one aloud with a kid in your lap– that moment can change you.

And I think it’s because that’s who Lauren is. Lauren sees an acorn and the acorn tells her something. She looks at a child and sees a full human soul. And she looks at the life she is leading and says, “We all get the time that we get.” I have never seen another person use and cherish each moment of their life as they live it quite like Lauren.

If you would like to share one of her beautiful books, Canadians, I recommend you get from Woozles! They are near Lauren and I know she’d be happy if you got from them– or from your own indie. Because I love it so very much, here’s a link to When Emily Was Small from bookshop.org. And don’t forget your local library!

And please consider pre-ordering her new book coming out in October: Tove and the Island with No Address.