West Coast author Sally Fitz-Gibbon has parlayed the magic of wearing fresh footwear into a joyful rhyming picture book. Using simple structured rhyme and ending each line with the word “shoes,” Fitz- Gibbon tells the story of a little girl who wears her new blue shoes and encounters adventure as she skips down the street. She finds herself “swinging from a rope … with an antelope,” “eating bread and cheese … with two chimpanzees,” and “dancing on the moon … with a blue baboon.” The magic ends as she goes to school, her adventure contained in familiar childhood routine.

The fanciful watercolour illustrations by New Jersey artist Farida Zaman have a deliberately childlike sensibility. On the cover and first page, the mother’s leg, which seems exaggerated in length, draws our eye toward the main character, the little girl. As well, throughout the book, faces and figures are drawn flat and without detail; proportions and perspectives are often skewed as if drawn by a child; and adult faces are often not shown – forcing the reader to view the adventure through a sea of legs just as a child does. These unconventional artistic choices effectively create pictures that are stylistically appealing to children.