Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes

Juno Valentine is getting ready for school one Monday morning, but she can’t find her favourite shoes. While she is searching through her closet, she falls into a magical place with all the shoes she could ever imagine. She begins trying on pairs of shoes that belonged to past and present female icons like Cleopatra, Jane Goodall, Gloria Steinem and Serena Williams. Her mom calls her for school and Juno finally finds her shoes, but before she leaves, she decides to add to her own shoes some of the magic elements from each of the pairs she tried on.

Full of examples of female role models, Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes is a really great book for young girls (and boys). There is even a guide at the end of the book with a list of all the women who are featured in the story with highlights from their lives and careers. The story is well-written and engaging. The dialogue is easy to read, but the author doesn’t use an oversimplified vocabulary as occurs in some writing for children.

The illustrations in Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes are very colourful and utilize collage that uses images of fabric, hair, plants and other textures, integrated with more traditional illustrations. The backgrounds become more enveloping when Juno is in the magical closet of shoes which sets the stage for her to adventure in each of the worlds the famous women inhabit.