Author(s): Coral Vass; Christina Huynh (Illustrator)

Picture Books

Age range 3+ Grandma has oodles and oodles of shoes! Walking shoes, dancing shoes, fancy andplain, Grandma has a shoe for every occasion. So why are these scratched anddusty old ones so special? Through read-along, rhythmic text and colourful images of all types ofshoes, we follow Grandma from her home country, wearing her 'roaming shoes andweary shoes', on a boat with her 'salty but free shoes' and into her new lifewhere she wears 'tiny shoes, school shoes, red shoes and blue shoes'. Yet hermemories remain with the 'scratched and scuffed shoes' in the cupboard -- the'weary little pair that led her here'. This story of migrating to a new life istold gently through the delightful, vibrant illustrations and the theme ofshoes that dance their way through this wonderful book. The story of refugees in Australia is told in a non-fiction section atthe back of the book, looking at the mass arrival of Vietnamese by boat in the1970s as an example. This sensitively told story encourages children to understand the plightfelt by refugees, in the past and today, and to appreciate the contributionthat refugees have made in shaping this nation.