Book Review: Boot & Shoe By Marla Frazee

Boot & Shoe are puppies from the same litter.

They are adopted into the same home. They share many things together. The only thing they don’t share is their special, personal territory. Shoe is a front porch kind of dog and Boot is a back porch kind of dog. And that’s where they spend their days until a mischievous squirrel shows up and upsets the balance and order of their world. Shoe, disoriented and tired, finds himself on the back porch. But where is Boot?

In this dog’s eye view of friendship, Frazee paints a gentle and lovely picture (in both words and art) of the ties that bind. Showing the kind of loyalty and determination that dogs are famous for, Shoe (and Boot as well) waits and searches, then searches and waits for his lost friend. The colored pencil renderings and muted colors help capture the loneliness that the pups feel between “lost” and “found.”

The text and artwork are especially poignant in capturing a lonely stretch on a rainy night during the story’s darkest hour. But in this story, the darkest hour is just before dawn; and Boot and Shoe are reunited. This story shows that distance is no obstacle for true friendship, especially when those friends are as closely matched as a pair of shoes (or boots!)

Brian Rock is a blogger for JenningsWire, a blogging community created by Annie Jennings.

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