Many “welcome baby” books skip over the anxious waiting that precedes a child’s arrival. In Before You Came, author Anne Renaud’s poetry leans into the magic of that phase: “Before you came, I wished you beneath the night sky, sometimes in whispers, upon every spark of light that dusted the dark, sometimes howling you to the moon.” 

Even fewer baby books capture the fierceness of new love between a parent and child and the experience of being totally consumed by the necessity of care. Renaud doesn’t skip those beats either: “Now that you are here, I breathe you in. You are my oxygen. Now that you are here, our steps travel the same path, and I will fight armies for you.” 

Renaud’s sprightly lines reveal her depth and confidence as a writer of contemporary lyrical picture books.

Nahid Kazemi’s soft, detailed illustrations are rendered in a muted palette, punctuated by striking crimson. Her figures and landscapes are beautiful, but also playfully unrestrained by conventions of proportion and scale. In her 2021 CBC essay “The Invisible Cage,” Kazemi wrote about artmaking under censorship in Iran. Her journey after moving to Canada offers another narrative: not just a story of family-making, but of artistic freedom.

Before You Came is a tender artistic collaboration, and an offering for anyone, of any age, still finding their way.mRb