Sandy Toes: A Summer Adventure

Now here is a book of beauty. Right away let me say, go get yourself a copy of Shauntay Grant’s newest picture book, Sandy Toes. The premise is simple enough but done with such skill: a story of black joy through the micro lens of one family’s beach adventure. As this beautiful family spends a day at the beach, following in the wake of their busy/happy toddler son, we have a background tale of sea turtles hatching and making their way to the sea. The author closes her work with the mystifying, yet true, story of sea turtle hatchlings. The nuances in this work are everywhere. Look for the turtles, look for the threads of home, and family, and memory that bring us all “back to the sea” in some sense. I was floored.

Bradley’s illustrations, created digitally, are lush and cool. They light up the text and create something greater than the sum of either part. My only critique of this whole work is the suggestion that the dust jacket didn’t serve the book as much as the underlying cover illustration. Easily remedied: when you buy the book (do it), you can take it off. The image of aforementioned toddler son floating in the translucent water just radiates.