New-Shoes-featured-image Columns 

Bookshelf Basics: “New Shoes” by Sara Varon

By | June 4th, 2018
Posted in Columns | % Comments

With so much great all-ages content out there and more arriving every week, whether you’re a parent, teacher, librarian, or young reader, sifting through it all can be a daunting task. Of course, tastes and reading lists are subjective and even change over time. With an ever-growing collection of newly released and classic books, Multiversity’s Bookshelf Basics is designed not only to give you a place to start, it’s somewhere you can return to as your tastes and interests change. In today’s installment, we look at “New Shoes” by Sara Varon, creator of the wordless graphic novel “Robot Dreams” and other whimsical tales.

Cover by Sara Varon
Written, Illustrated and Colored by Sara Varon

Francis the donkey lives a tranquil life as a prominent shoemaker in a tropical village.  When he discovers his friend Nigel the squirrel monkey is missing, he must go on a journey into the jungle to find him.  Along the way, he learns about jungle animals and fruits, meets new friends, and has lots of adventures.

Okay, Let’s Start with the Basics

“New Shoes” is a full length, self-contained graphic novel written and illustrated by Sara Varon. Wonderfully inked and colored in an immediately accessible, playful style, the book is clearly geared toward younger grade school readers, but there’s also enough substance to entertain and engage older readers and adults. Stylistically, it feels a lot like a picture book, with tons of full-page and two-page spreads and paneling that keeps things simple, with never more than three panels per page. The story is largely told through dialogue, with minimal narration where needed, and broken into compact chapters, making it easy to read aloud over a handful of sittings if desired. Either way, there are plenty of natural breaks to summarize what’s happened so far, talk about the characters and make predictions.

What’s It All About?

Since he was a young foal, Francis the donkey always wanted to be a shoemaker. As the story opens, he is a well established artisan, handcrafting pairs of shoes for animals from near and far. As befits the current craze for maker culture and farm-to-table ethos, Frances uses coconut wood for the soles, pads them with extra comfortable goat wool from down the road and has chickens weave the uppers from wild tiger grass collected by his good friend and neighbor Nigel, a squirrel monkey who gathers the special fibers once a week from somewhere deep in the jungle. Francis also has a penchant for calypso music and a renowned record collection. In fact, as Francis makes his shoes, local animals from the village stop by to chat and listen to music.

One day, a stranger appears and places an order for Miss Manatee, “The River Queen,” an infamous calypso songstress who will soon be performing in the village, for the first time ever on land. Naturally, she needs new shoes. Francis is so excited he can barely sleep, imagining myriad designs and special touches he will add to his hero’s amazing new footwear.

The next morning, however, Nigel is nowhere to be found and nobody else from the village has any idea where he might be. Even worse, Francis has no clue where the tiger grass comes from and can’t get started on Miss Manatee’s shoes until he has some. After a brief conversation with his friend Rhoda, a parrot, it becomes abundantly clear that Francis must do something he’s never done before: leave the village and that’s where the real fun begins. Francis and Rhoda traverse the jungle in search of Nigel, meeting lots of interesting characters along the way. Thankfully, Nigel has packed some guidebooks so he doesn’t seem “provincial” if he encounters animals he’s never seen before.

What Makes It Essential?

The script and the dialogue are witty, funny and utterly charming. Likewise, the illustrations are consistently in point, with a definite emphasis on character designs and facial expressions. Much of the time the backgrounds are reduced to simple color fields, but other times key details help to ground the story in a lush and colorful tropical world that feels equally authentic and fantastical. Several pages of endmatter detail Varon’s visual references and inspirations and it’s clear she has a love for and familiarity with the setting that makes her fanciful illustration ring true.

Continued below

The story itself is simple and easy to follow, yet offers enough quirky twists and clever dialogue that it never feels predictable. Sara Varon has a knack for creating wonderfully realized anthropomorphic characters with true all-ages appeal and this book is perfect example. Francis is the kind of flawed but lovable character you want to cheer for, but all of the characters stand out in their own special way. The moment when jaguar, wild hog, and howler monkey laugh at and comment on the entries about themselves in Francis’s book, “Mammals of the Neo-Tropical Rain Forest,” is both endearing and laugh-out-loud funny. And it’s just one small example of the many delightful moments of character interaction sprinkled throughout the book.

How Can You Read It?

“New Shoes” is available in hardcover wherever books are sold. There’s also a Kindle version for sale via Amazon.

In Conclusion

Whether she’s writing about robots, animals, or anthropomorphic baked goods, Sara Varon’s characters are quirky, memorable, and authentically human, whatever form they actually take. In her latest graphic novel, “New Shoes,” Varon creates a wonderfully distinct and engaging cast of animal characters and gives them space to be exactly who they are. Her immediately accessible, often picture book style of illustration and simple paneling – peppered with clever dialogue and minimal exposition – make it a great book to share with younger readers and read out loud. No doubt they will want to hear it again and again. Thankfully, you will too.


John Schaidler

EMAIL | ARTICLES