Rainbow Shoes. Tiffany Stone. Illustrated by Stefan Czernecki. Vancouver, BC: Tradewind Books, 2012. 32 pp., hardcover, $14.95. ISBN 978-1-896580-85-2. Preschool-grade 2 / Ages 3-7. Review by Amber Allen. ** /4

excerpt:

Even stains and holes don't bother me—no—
when my hair's streaked cyan or indigo.

Cobalt, peacock, sapphire, too.
I'm well-dressed cuz my hair is blue.

Tiffany Stone offers up a collection of 14 creative poems that are thematically linked by two staples of children's vocabulary, colours and clothing. Each poem is stylistically unique, offering different tones, rhythms, and lengths. Stefan Czernecki's accompanying illustrations, which are simple and charming, use mostly monochromatic colour schemes. These cartoon images work with the poems and do not overpower them. In some cases, they even work as visual clues to the subtext. An added visual delight is worked right into the text with some words highlighted by colour or font differentiation.

     The rhyme scheme is on the mark in most of the poems, and each page shares a silly story in twenty lines or less. Standout poems include "The Blues" for the amazing colour vocabulary (giving us the names of seven different shades of blue) and "This is Not Dad's Old Shirt" which offers great imaginative depth in all the uses for an old, white button up.

      While the poems in Rainbow Shoes are fun, they are not without any problems. It is ill-advised to use fake words like "bestest" and slang like "cuz" in books for young children as it can be confusing as they try to navigate the grammatical structure of a language that is still new to them. This is a good collection for the young poetry lover, though not exceptional. It is not a timeless collection to be read over and over, but it will offer a fun little romp in one or two read-throughs.

Recommended.

Amber Allen is a librarian in Toronto, ON, with a passion for children's literature.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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