Delightful little book about a young girl whose mother takes her shopping for new shoes, sensible shoes, while pretty red shoes are what she really wants. ( )

This book elicited smiles and memories. The character of the story does not have a name. She is a girl who is going shopping with her mother for shoes. She is drug along and from the illustrations doesn't feel in the moood for this task. The facial expressions rendered Ashley Spires are very expressive.

There are many shoes in the stores and the girls looks up, up and up at all the selections. And, she finds the single most important shoe for her. It is a pair of Mary Janes that are bright red. The shoes are not the typical brown shoes for school, or sneakers for the play ground, rather they are shiny and beautiful and seem to sing a song to the girl.

Her mother chooses the lace ups, while the girl pleads for the red ones while four boxes of lace up shoes in various colors are waiting to be placed on her foot. When the red shoes are finally placed on her feet, she feels elevated and so very happy as it feels as though a breeze lifts her up while wering the red ones.

And to the girls surprise, her mother purchases the red shoes for her. At night, she feels the thin paper in the box holding the shoes inside. It is time for bed. Still excited that she actually has the shoes, she sleeps with them on her feet.

There is nothing intellectual about this book, but at the end of a day when I'm tired, it is a joy to allow myself to go back in time remembering how I felt like the little girl who wanted the pretty shoes rather than the functional ones.

My sisters and I went shopping at the end of August, before school began. We obtained two pairs, a pair of sneakers, and a pair for school. Both were very functional. But when I grew old enough to make my own shoes, I chose the non-functional ones! ( )

I had a red pair of maryjane shoes just like these when I was this girls' age, and I also always slept with my new (clean, not work outside yet) shoes on. V relatable :-) ( )

Interesting homage to materialism. I guess the fact is that most people do find their spirits lifted by a little special something, though, so we might as well acknowledge it. Beautifully written verse and illustration design. ( )

I love the story, “The Red Shoes!” My favorite thing about this book is the author’s use of similes, metaphors, and personification. The author does a great job of makings things that aren’t alive come alive. For example, in the story one page says, “My eyes hunt, my toes tingle. They call me from the corner, ruby whispers, shiny silver giggles.” This sentence, in my opinion has a lot of meaning to it and is a very valuable sentence to the story. By personifying the shoes, the author shows how important and magical they are to the little girl. If the author were to not personify the shoes then they would just be comparable to any other shoe on the shelf. I also think that by personifying the shoes the author makes the book more interesting to a reader because shoes that whisper and giggle are not real, which makes this part of the book unordinary and fascinating. Another thing that I liked about the book was the author’s use of similes as I said earlier. An example of the author’s use of similes is in the sentence, “My feet huff, puff, like two tired trains.” In my opinion, using a simile to describe how the character’s feet felt was a great way to give the reader a mental image of the character and to also help the reader to emphasize with the character or understand how her feet felt (exhausted). Another aspect of the book that I liked was the illustrations. All of the illustrations are dark and almost in a greyscale color scheme. The red shoes are the only colored part of the illustrations throughout the whole book. I think that by having the red shoes be the only colored part of the book, the author emphasizes that the red shoes are a very important part of the story. The central message of the book is that being different is a magical experience and it can bring great experiences with it. The central message of the story is supported by the idea that the red shoes are personified and almost magical because they are so different from the rest of the shoes in the store. ( )