THE SHOE TREE OF CHAGRIN

With contagious wonder and language as broad as the lady herself, Lewis (Good Mousekeeping, p. 743, etc.) adds an outsized new member to the ranks of tall-tale heroines, introducing itinerant cobbler Susannah DeClare: “Strong as a lockbox and as long as a good spit in a windstorm.” As welcome for her news as for her shoes, Susannah worked the small towns of the Ohio Valley years ago, taking orders, then returning months later with finished footwear and updates on births, deaths, and other events she’d gathered along the way. Alas, after many years she met her end making one final pre-Christmas delivery to Chagrin Falls, braving the chill of a hard “Snohio” winter to hang her wares on a tree outside town—a tree that actually exists and is still hung about with shoes. Fancy typeface and layout give the pages an over-designed look, but brawny, gray-haired Susannah towers as convincingly in Sheban’s dusky scenes as in the grand music of Lewis’s words, and fans of Anne Isaacs’s Swamp Angel (1994) will welcome her into the fold. (Picture book/tall tale. 7-10)