Special thanks to Jeanne van Etten for emailing me about this book. The illustrations made of very thin ink lines are spectacular. I am especially impressed with the perfection of the strands of hair which your eye follows like waves through each spread. The story is a modern take on Hans Christian Andersen’s version from 1845. After the death of her mother, a young woman, Karen, cherishes the red shoes her mother, a shoemaker, has made for her. One day a princess demands to the queen, that she wants Karen’s red shoes but when Karen tries to get them off they refuse to budge. The queen gives Karen three days to release the shoes and Karen has to figure out a way to do it. It’s a happy ending when Karen figures out she can use her creative talents passed down from her mother to make tons of gorgeous shoes and then the princess decides to buy a different pair. I do have one small criticism of the book. There’s so much talk of the “red shoes” but like every other pair in the book they are just black and white. I think the illustrations could have benefited from a red spot color on just those shoes to make them stand out from the rest of the black and white world. Still the book is extremely well made like the rest of the AMMO books I’ve seen. Get a copy of the book here

© Julia Rothman 2007