Jason Reynolds’s forthcoming picture book Dig turns a simple ritual between a father and son into a meditation on family, loss and what relationships leave behind. Illustrated by Taeeun Yoo, the story follows the pair as they dig in places ranging from sand to snow, growing older together until the father can no longer take part. The repeated action gives the story a structure that can hold change: the surroundings shift, the son grows up, and the father’s presence eventually becomes a memory. A shovel and a patch of ground are modest materials for a story about a lifetime. That restraint may be what lets the emotional weight gather.
Reynolds’s father died in 2020, and the experience shaped the book. “The mysteriousness of death was really fascinating and interesting to me,” Reynolds said. He found his emotions more complicated than grief and sadness, and wanted to express the peace, joy and curiosity that accompanied his loss. That mix matters for a picture book, a form often expected to make difficult subjects legible for young readers without flattening them. Reynolds’s account suggests that Dig won’t treat death as a lesson with a tidy answer; it begins instead with the questions and contradictions that bereavement can leave behind.
That reflection led him back to the life he and his father had shared: their conversations, their ups and downs, and the adventures they took together. For Reynolds, the act of digging became a way to think about how people build something through time spent with one another. “The deeper the hole, the higher the mountain, right?” he said. “And the deeper the relationship, the more fruitful it is in the end.” The metaphor links effort to what remains, while the book’s changing settings suggest that the bond is not tied to one place or one age. This is more significant than it looks: repetition can make ordinary time feel visible, especially when a story is asking readers to consider what lasts after someone is gone.
Dig is scheduled for publication on May 4, 2027. Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books acquired North American rights, along with non-exclusive English-language rights in the rest of the world. Elena Giovinazzo of Heirloom Literary & Media represented Reynolds; Holly McGhee of Pippin Properties represented Yoo. Those details establish the book’s publishing path, but the central interest is the collaboration between a writer drawing on personal loss and an illustrator translating that experience into images for young readers. The long lead time also gives the project room to arrive as a considered work rather than a quick response to its subject.
A long-awaited picture book
Although Reynolds has published picture books before, Dig was the first he sold. Best known for young adult and middle grade novels including Long Way Down, Ghost and Look Both Ways, he said he had wanted to write for picture book readers for years. The change in format brings a different constraint: a writer has fewer words and must leave space for the pictures to carry meaning. Reynolds’s experience across age groups gives him a wide audience, but a familiar name doesn’t automatically solve the formal challenge of writing for the youngest readers.
“[The team at] Simon & Schuster will tell you that I’ve given them 20 to 30 picture books over the course of our tenure, and I just couldn’t quite crack the code,” Reynolds said. Dig eventually clicked. His 2023 picture book, There Was a Party for Langston, created with illustrators Jerome and Jarrett Pumphrey, sold and was published soon after. The contrast between years of attempts and a project that finally worked points to the difficulty of finding a picture book’s right balance of compression, image and feeling. A concise story still needs room for readers to make their own discoveries.
The book joins a tradition of picture books using digging to suggest discovery and change, from Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak’s A Hole Is to Dig to Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. Reynolds sees the metaphor in what the characters leave behind: “Digging is the one thing that you do that leaves something bigger behind.” The comparison places Dig in familiar territory while giving it a distinct emotional purpose: the hole is not only a place to find something, but evidence of time spent together. Here’s the thing: the act can be both practical and symbolic without requiring the story to spell out every meaning.
Yoo’s quieter interpretation
Yoo initially considered several approaches, including multiple central characters and a more direct invitation to readers. After learning how closely the story connected to Reynolds’s life, she chose a simpler focus on the father and son. That decision narrows the visual field around the relationship at the heart of the book. It also leaves readers room to follow the pair’s changing lives without competing points of view drawing attention elsewhere.
“I realized that this story is about a father and son’s life together—discovering new things, unearthing hidden treasure, and growing together as they dig,” Yoo said. Her description connects the physical action to a sequence of shared experiences: discovery, surprise and gradual change. The treasure need not be a grand revelation. In a story built around an ordinary ritual, what matters may be the attention the two characters give each other while they search.
The South Korean illustrator made the artwork using paper-cut printing rather than linoleum block printing. She printed the colored sections, added pencil-drawn lines and completed the images digitally. Sketching took about a year, followed by more than five months on the finished art. That process layers distinct marks and methods, which can give illustrated scenes a tactile quality suited to a story about working with the ground. And this is the part most people overlook: Yoo’s response wasn’t only technical. The process also prompted her to reflect on her own relationship with her father.
Though Dig begins with loss, its central ritual holds onto the value of being together while the opportunity lasts. As Reynolds put it: “They’re digging because they know that every time they put that shovel in the ground, there’s something there for them. And even if there’s not, at least they’re together.” That’s a plain statement, but it resists turning companionship into a reward that must be earned. Sometimes the shared act is enough.
What the book leaves with readers
Dig appears to approach bereavement through accumulated moments rather than a single defining scene. That choice can be useful for children, who may encounter loss through changing routines and family stories as much as through direct explanation. It also gives adult readers a way to talk about absence without pretending that every question has an answer. If you’re working in this space, the balance between personal history and a broadly recognizable ritual is the book’s central editorial challenge.
That said, the premise’s simplicity places real demands on both text and art. The father and son must feel specific enough to carry Reynolds’s experience, while the act of digging must remain open enough for readers to bring their own associations. A restrained approach can make that possible. But restraint has to be earned through detail and pacing, especially when the story moves across years and ends with one character unable to continue.
The book’s outlook rests in that tension: loss changes the relationship, but it doesn’t erase the time that came before it. The hole remains as a mark of what the pair did together. Not a neat answer. A trace.
