This book was a lot of fun to read with my four year old niece. On one page it will show a photograph of someones shoes, then you have to guess to whom they belong too. My niece loved it! It was perfect for teaching occupational vocabulary. It also does a good job of being gender diverse in the different occupations. ( )

I have mixed feelings about this quirky board book. It features a number of photographs of people wearing shoes, and then specific shoes, asking kids to guess who wears them.

The shoe questions include pointe shoes for a ballerina, rubber boots for a farmer, boots and protective clothing for a fire fighter, boots and fatigues for an Army National Guard, cleats for a soccer player, work boots for a construction worker, sturdy black shoes for a postal worker, black slip-ons for a chef, and pink, oversize shoes for a clown.

There are a couple darker-skinned legs in the mixed pictures. The ballerina and postal worker are white females, the farmer, construction worker, and chef are white males. The soccer player is a black male. The soldier and fire fighter are, I think females but it's hard to tell. They're both white. The clown is also white, but I can't tell the gender. A final picture at the end of the book shows kids dressed up in their parents (presumably) shoes. A white kid in a cowboy hat, Latino boy in construction gear, white girl with heels and a briefcase, and Asian boy in a medical uniform.

So, I feel like an effort was made at diversity but it was not wholly successful. Some of the pictures are confusing - what about plain black shoes says "chef" as opposed to postal worker? Many of them are identified by their pants or the equipment they're standing on or with, rather than the shoes.

Verdict: A nice idea, but fell short in the execution.

ISBN: 9781629796918; Published September 2016 by Boyds Mills; Borrowed from another library in my consortium

I liked Swinburne's full-color photographs that were used as illustrations - they were clear, mostly well-composed and had child-appeal. The book opens with a few brief statements about shoes and then moves into a guessing game for the second half of the book. With one exception, the guessing game was well constructed with context clues beyond the type of shoe apparent in the photos. The chef's shoes are a bit mystifying though and I just breezed right through that page, basically telling the kids (and parents) the answer without having them guess because there's just not enough there to figure it out. This worked fine for storytime, but not great; in the end I think it was a little boring and I probably won't use it again. It might also work as an easy reader for beginning readers since there's few words and a lot of repetition, but I'm not convinced this would be a high interest title for those kids even with the photographs.

Used for Shine Those Shoes Storytime - Terrific Ts and Preschool on 5/4/10 and Family on 5/6/10. ( )

Different shoes do different jobs. People wear special types of shoes in order for them to complete their work with ease. ( )

Photographs of shoes makes the point that people need different footwear depending on the kind of work they do. Simple text and concept.