In the swampy woods surrounding one of Nova Scotia’s oldest black communities, a girl and her grandfather search for a special branch. Like magic, he whittles it into a flute that sounds as beautiful as music from the sky. The plot is pared down to the essentials, as are words and pictures, making this book perfectly suited for its intended audience of very young children.

First-time children’s author Denise Gillard is a Baptist minister who drew inspiration from the old spiritual: “Over my head, I hear music in the air.” At times Gillard’s text is brilliantly brief but layered with nuance and a delightfully quirky child’s-eye view. There are a few inconsistencies: occasional long, complex sentences detour from the child’s voice, “Grampa” is also called “Gramps” and “grandfather” (two names too many for a 418-word book,) and we don’t get to hear the sounds of the sky and the flute, as we hear the “creak, creak” of the stairs and the “squish, squish” of the swamp.

Muted, uncluttered backgrounds in Stephen Taylor’s gentle watercolour illustrations allow his subjects to take centre stage. The appealing girl, her huggable Grampa, and their warm relationship glow in every smile, posture, and touch of the hand. Step-by-step illustrations show experienced whittlers how to carve a flute. Just one painting falls short: when the girl remembers attending a concert, the magic and wonder usually associated with such events are missing, and would have heightened the contrast between the silver flute she tried to play after the concert that day and failed, and the one her Grampa carves, which yields beautiful music the moment it touches her lips.