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Miss Rafferty’s Rainbow Socks

by Annette LeBox, Heather Holbrook, illus.

Miss Rafferty’s rainbow socks move her to lively tunes and joyful dance. Being magic socks, they also grow along with her, even into her old age. And so it is that Miss Rafferty is a delightful old woman when she meets Winnie, the little girl next door, and takes her under her wing. Over the years, Winnie and Miss Rafferty meet in the evenings for tea and knitting and, most importantly, the rainbow socks-inspired dancing. In true fairy-tale fashion, a metamorphosis marks the pivotal event in the story: with the old woman’s help, the socks become a rainbow doll for Winnie. The little girl now becomes the story’s heroine, showing herself to be, like Miss Rafferty, capable of both sacrifice and celebration.

This is a story about celebrating life, and the book not only espouses this principle but embodies its spirit. The prose is delightfully rhythmic: flowing and elaborate in some places, sharp and tapping in others. LeBox, who also writes children’s verse, has incorporated her poetic skills gracefully into her prose. The illustrations, with their elaborate colour and detail, are just as pleasing. The waxy richness of each form is outlined in delicate white, producing an effect that is like both silk screening and the layered colouring of a Ukrainian Easter egg. The illustrations not only complement the written narrative but meld with it, and the highly successful interplay between the two makes it all the more surprising that this is not only the first collaboration between LeBox and Holbrook but the first children’s book for either of them.

Recurring elements in the book convey much of its charm. For example, the description of dancing is always as a “whirling and dipping and sashaying and kicking up [of] heels.” Holbrook adds her own recurring motifs, such as the orange tabby who appears in nearly every frame, usually preoccupied with the pursuit of string. While behavioural models abound in the story – illustrating the value of hard work, self sacrifice and sharing – the esthetics of the book tend to predominate, taking it safely out of the category of the sugar-coated moral pill.

 

Reviewer: Bridget Donald

Publisher: HarperCollins

DETAILS

Price: $16.95

Page Count: 32 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 0-00-224372-5

Released: July

Issue Date: 1996-6

Categories: Children and YA Fiction, Picture Books

Age Range: ages 4–8