Set on the West Coast during the Second World War, this exquisitely sad and beautiful book tells of the friendship between Mary, a prairie girl visiting her grandmother for the summer, and Mr. Hiroshi, the next-door neighbour who shares his garden with her until he is interned with the other Japanese Canadians in the area. When Mary says goodbye to Mr. Hiroshi, she promises to look after his garden. She keeps her promise until the house is sold, and then honours the friendship by transplanting two of his irises – a variety called flags – in the soil of her prairie home. Thus, the title of the book has two meanings. The usual one of flags as national symbols connotes, in this case, the ignorance and cruelty of rigid ideas of nationhood. But its more immediate meaning – the irises from Mr. Hiroshi’s garden – conveys messages of hope and redemption.

Award-winning Canadian author Maxine Trottier has written 11 picture books, including the recently published One is Canada. Her prose style in Flags is like the Japanese garden in the book: the words are carefully chosen, the sentences meticulously shaped, and the effect highly lyrical. Her handling of tone is deft: its understated quality bypasses the sermon and cuts straight to the emotional heart of the story. In perfect harmony with the text are Paul Morin’s paintings, which are up to his usual exacting standards of colour, texture, and composition. The facial expressions and postures of his figures help bring home a sense of sadness and outrage, but these double-page spreads also luxuriate in the splendour of mid-summer on the Pacific, the pleasure in small things of beauty, and the power of a heartfelt gesture.