This book by one of our favorite children's book authors is about a tantrum is over a shoe. Wars have been fought over even sillier things, as you may recall from Dr. Seuss' satirical The Butter Battle Book (in which two sides feud over whether to butter their bread on the "up" side or the "down" side). The shoe is red, the shoe is the child's favorite, and nonetheless the child flees from the shoe and flops on the floor to avoid wearing it, while their mother pursues them in hopeful expectation of eventually getting it on their foot.
Three-time Caldecott Honor Winner Marla Frazee has three grown sons, so no wonder her illustrations are so amusingly true-to-life as child and mother battle it out in dozens of postures of pursuit and avoidance. Soon, the exasperated mother can't help but imagine that her child will forever be on the floor, going for instance "on very important business trips on the floor" and being "a baseball player on the floor" (as we see the prone child hold up a mitt to catch in incoming pitch).
This kind of exaggeration escalates when the mother loses her patience and says, "put on your shoes or I will throw them in the garbage and they will be brought to the dump where they will live forever next to an old rubber tire and a broken toaster." And when she, too, makes her "maddest face."
But here we get to a level of truth uncommon on Earth if not necessarily in children's books. Even with all this anger and impatience, "you are still you (funny sweet you) and i am still me (funny sweet me) ...." A reconciliation takes place that does not solve the problem but simply transcends it with love and awareness of an unshakable connection. We were reminded of I Corinthians 13:7: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." So love bursts back in upon this duo, though we won't say who in the end gets the upper hand (or foot).
Julie Fogliano is a New York Times bestselling author of children's books, including If I Was the Sunshine and All the Beating Hearts. She is the recipient of the Ezra Jack Keats Award, a two time Horn Book Award Honoree and the Claudia Lewis award for poetry. Her books have been translated into more than 10 languages. When she is not folding laundry or wondering what to make for dinner, she is staring out the window waiting for a book idea to fly by.
