Grandma's treasured Shoes by Coral Vass illustrated by Christina Huynh

The first thing I noticed when reading Grandma's treasured shoes was the power of contrasting language.  On the opening pages the shoes are:

Walk to the park shoes
Dance in the dark shoes
Fun shoes and sun shoes
Out and about shoes
Splash in the rain shoes

Then the reader turns the page and the tone completely changes. Grandma does have lots of shoes but her favourite shoes are worn and torn. They come from a different place and time:

They're old shoes
Frail shoes
Dusty and pale shoes
Hidden with secrets
Remarkable tales

These are the old shoes Grandma wore back as a small child back in her village in Vietnam. She wore them when the family were forced to flee, with no luggage, with just the shoes on her feet.  They became escaping shoes as the family embark on a long and very dangerous boat journey.

Here are some more of the powerful words in this text
trembling shoes
teary shoes
roaming shoes
weary shoes

This book is written for very young children and it is a gentle way to share the journey of refugees. Grandma (who was a very young child when she left Vietnam) arrives to the new land and is given new shoes. The repeated text from the opening pages gives the story a very satisfying sense of completion. Grandma may be old now but she keeps her little childhood shoes as a memory of times past and as a memory of her new life in Australia.

Here is a very detailed set of teaching notes.

And here is the web site for the illustrator Christina Huynh. You can read an interview with Christina. 

Coral Vass is the author of Sorry Day which has been short listed by the CBCA in 2019 for the Eve Pownall award. 

If you are working with older students it would be interesting to compare this text with the famous poem Choosing Shoes by Frida Wolfe. Coral Vass talks about the inspiration behind this story. I know it is far away but I would like to see this book - Grandma's Treasured Shoes listed by the CBCA for the 2020 awards either as a notable title or, even better, on the early childhood short list.

Read more about this book in this review from The Bottom Shelf.