THE GIRL WHO WORE TWO DIFFERENT SHOES

A quirky woman spreads joy and optimism wherever she goes in Exelbierd’s illustrated children’s book.

Rayna Rose, known to those around her for always wearing two different colored shoes, spends her days celebrating the differences that make her—and everyone else—unique. Always looking on the bright side, Rayna Rose doesn’t let things like traffic get her down. Instead, she gets out of her car and dances while waiting for a bridge to come down, or starts impromptu games with other cars at red lights: “Do you know how to play rock, paper, scissors shoe? / That’s Rayna Rose’s favorite thing to do! Games, Sports, / and even high fives mean the same in every language.” Readers follow Rayna Rose as she runs errands, rollerblades by the ocean, and gets her nails done. Through it all, she maintains a healthy sense of confidence and encourages others to do the same. Fraser’s illustrations are outlined in bold black lines with bright colors and minimal shading. The style is highly cartoonish (people only have four fingers on each hand, for example) and exudes the same joy that Rayna Rose clearly radiates. While the book relays the important theme of embracing what makes us different, there are plenty of typos and random capitalizations to distract from that message. The story is told in verse, and the rhyme scheme is haphazard at best, with some lines not making much sense at all. The narrator mentions Tennessee for no other reason than to make a rhyme, for example, when it’s been established that Rayna Rose lives near the ocean: “She needs to get her nails done for her speech. / She goes to see her friend Tony, he is Vietnamese. / She says, ‘Tony, let’s make my nails pretty for Tennessee!’” All of this ultimately results in a book with an uplifting moral that is conveyed in a disappointingly muddled way.

A brightly colored celebration of individuality that unfortunately falls flat.