One Red Shoe

by Karin Gruss, Tobias Krejtschi (Illustrator)

Overview

You're about to go to a place where thousands, even millions, of kids live every day. You're about to enter a war zone.

       

There's been an attack. Grabbing his camera, a newspaper photographer rushes to the nearest clinic. What he finds there will change the way he thinks forever. Inspired by real events in the Middle East, this groundbreaking and acclaimed picture book for older readers will take you to a place far from comfort and safety. What could you possibly have in common with the kids who live there? You're about to find out. One Red Shoe was named one of the five Most Beautiful German Books of 2013 in the children's book category by the German Book Art Foundation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780987109965
Publisher:	Wilkins Farago Pty Ltd
Publication date:	02/01/2015
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.90(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Karin Gruss is a former teacher and bookseller, and oversaw the picture book program at publishing house Peter Hammer Verlag. She currently works as a consultant and instructor on children's literature. One Red Shoe is her first picture book. Tobias Krejtschi is the illustrator of Crafty Mama Sambona, which received several awards (nominated for the German Children's Literature Award, Troisdorfer Picture Book Prize) and has been translated into multiple languages.

Editorial Reviews

12/15/2014
An adult narrator, a newspaper photographer, delivers a pained recounting of the aftermath of a school bus bombing (a note explains that Gruss’s debut picture book is “based on impressions of the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip”). Although the photographer is seen in the book’s opening and closing scenes, the majority of Krejtschi’s b&w images have the feel of on-the-scene photojournalism, with pictures of children playing hopscotch beside ruined buildings and of paramedics rushing an injured boy to a hospital. The boy, whose single red basketball shoe provides a hit of color, becomes the photographer’s focus (the nine-year-old, Kenan, has sustained a grenade hit to the leg, and the unspoken truth appears to be that Kenan’s other shoe isn’t all he has lost). The book’s gritty realism breaks as the photographer’s camera display seems to show Kenan standing up and playing with a basketball, a fleeting moment of wishful thinking. It’s a difficult, upsetting story of the violent unpredictability of life in a war zone, one that will undoubtedly lead to discussions in families and classrooms. Ages 10–up. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

It’s a difficult, upsetting story of the violent unpredictability of life in a war zone, one that will undoubtedly lead to discussions in families and classrooms.”  —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher