Baby Shoes
By Dashka Slater; illustrated by Hiroe Nakata
Bloomsbury Children's Books, $15.95
40 pages, ISBN 1582346844

Reviewed by Amy Brozio-Andrews

Ever wonder why most babies' walking shoes are white? As every parent knows, the nice white baby shoes you just purchased for your pride and joy remain looking clean and bright for only a short time before they're stained, scuffed, and dingy, looking more gray than white. But it's a safe bet your baby's shoes were never broken in quite so quickly or colorfully as the baby's in Dashka Slater's Baby Shoes.

While heading home from the shoe store wearing a brand-spankin' new pair of white shoes with a blue stripe along the bottom, a busy, inquisitive toddler leads his expectant mom on a wild walk through town that leaves the gleeful baby with well-worn shoes and a pooped out mama. Drawing with chalk, playing in the grass, stepping on plums, crossing a freshly painted crosswalk, and jumping in puddles all leave a rainbow of colors on the toddler's new shoes.

The fun-to-read-aloud text is punctuated by repeating verses that make it easy for young readers to chime in:

"Baby says, 'uh-oh!'
Mama says, 'Oh, no!'
But those shoes just go, go, go."

The verses' rhyming patterns change several times, and, while the patterns do repeat throughout the book, the first few pages can be a bit awkward for the reader until you get the hang of the rhythm of the story.

Slater's recurring use of onomatopoeic action words like high-jumping, fast-running, dizzy-spinning conveys a vibrancy and energy that makes Baby Shoes a great good morning-story, one that will get the day started with a punch.

As the baby gets into humorous scrape after scrape, kids will have fun identifying the colors of the chalk, grass, paint, plums, and puddle. For young children just learning their colors, Baby Shoes gives parents an opportunity to help reinforce those skills and allows kids to show off what they know.

Hiroe Nakata's vivid watercolor illustrations of scenes that will be familiar to kids matches Slater's light prose perfectly. The mother's and baby's facial expressions shine through, reinforcing for kids the words that they're hearing in the story. A broad mix of layouts -- Nakata sets up full-page illustrations facing multi-picture pages, directing the reader's focus to the baby's glee and mother's chagrin -- keep up visual interest throughout the book.

Nakata's ability to get down to a child's level, literally and figuratively (for example, there's one page on which the baby's bent completely over, looking at the reader upside down) adds intimacy and warmth to Baby Shoes. Her depiction of action after action helps keep the book moving, matching up to Slater's story step by step. Her rounded brushstrokes add softness to the pictures, further strengthening the book's appeal to very young readers.

Whether or not your baby had a great time breaking in her first pair of shoes, you and your child can both enjoy the experience again, living vicariously through Dashka Slater's baby in Baby Shoes.