Shoe Magic

NIKKI GRIMES is the recipient of the 2006 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Her distinguished works include the ALA Notable book What is Goodbye?, as well as the novels Jazmin's Notebook, Dark Sons, and The Road to Paris, all of them Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books. She won the Coretta Scott King Author Award for Bronx Masquerade. Ms. Grimes lives in Corona, California. Visit Nikki at  www.nikkigrimes.com.

Gr. 2-5, younger for reading aloud. "The shoe rack / Is stacked / With promise, / With dreams / Waiting to wake." Each poem in Grimes' latest collection uses a different type of shoe to explore a youngster's pride of accomplishment and hope for the future. A ballerina talks about her scuffed ballet shoes "tough enough . . . to strike a stubborn pose"; a young runner longing for fancy footwear realizes "It's not the shoes / that do the runnin'. / It's the feet." The poetry is uneven, mixing tightly rhymed couplets and loosened rhythm and rhyme with occasionally forced results; many poems work better out loud. But the voices convey a joyful purpose as they describe the hard work of the present and dreams about the future. The bright, foot-centric artwork, brimming with fanciful, stylized shapes, plays up the diverse speakers' exuberance and energy, though the pictures work best when paired with a poem on a white background. Then the words have more room to create their own images. Young ones struggling to express their own experiences in art and sports will find inspiration here. Gillian Engberg
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