Shoe Wars

January 15, 2021
Can the Foot family win a footwear design competition against the terrible Wendy Wedge and win the Golden Shoe Award? Ruby and Bear live in the Shoebox neighborhood in Shoe Town with their Dad, Ivor Foot, in a house shaped like a shoebox. Ivor ran a shoe shop making amazing footwear designed by his wife, Sally, but after Sally died in a mysterious accident, Ivor became the victim of the evil Wendy Wedge, a jealous rival shoemaker and de facto owner of Shoe Town. Wendy made Ivor sign over the rights to all their property and designs, then demolished the shop--although Dad secretly managed to save a pair of Sally's flying shoes. Aided by his plucky kids, resourceful Dad develops a plan to foil Wendy and win the coveted Golden Shoe Award. Complex hijinks ensue ad nauseam. Although the cartoony, black-and-white line illustrations and funky use of typography lend visual variety to the pages, the book is, fundamentally, too long. The introduction of shoemakers Betty Boot and Bert Brogue, who offer support to the children and help with the competition, does not alleviate the monotony of the thin plot and repetitious shoe humor. The Foot family and Wendy appear to be White; Betty and Bert read as Black. Silly shoes and villainous caprices fail to sustain a book of this length. (Fiction. 8-12)

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March 12, 2021
Grades 3-5 Two children and their widower dad square off against a thoroughly despicable tycoon in this uncomplicated, heavily illustrated, shoe-centric scramble. Seeking to tie up the coveted Golden Shoe Award, footwear maven Wendy Wedge ruthlessly menaces the grieving Foot family in an effort to snatch the flying shoes Sally Foot designed before her death. Wedge looks like a shoe-in at the climatic victory awards, too--until the Foots (Feet?) pair up with the proprietor of the last independent shoe store in town and other allies to fit her for a humiliating expos� of bad behavior that promises to leave Wedge fit to be tied. Along with white-on-black pages and other typographic tomfoolery, Pichon's text is laced with so many ink-and-fill cartoon scenes, characters, and marginalia that the tale takes on a cinematic rush. The author also shoehorns in enough puns, double entendres, "foot" notes, and references to camera shoes, shushi shoes, shoes with hidden compartments, and like baroque brogans to keep readers in stitches.

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