The Feet Feat

books:

	• The Queen's Feet Sarah Ellis Red Deer Press, 2008 - 32 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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The Feet Feat

(with apologies to Amazon.com reviewer "Longboard" Jazzer)

Face it.

Feet are funny.

Especially when they're the feet of a queen who is SUPPOSED to act very proper and prim.

Especially when you're of toddler or young elementary school age, and love a giggly-silly book about a Queen with an irrepresible urge to flaunt royal convention by wearng the funniest, goofiest, zaniest, and most colorful and crazy footwear in the kingdom--make that Queendom--because this lady rules her realm.

Dig this.

The Queen's feet makes her do wild and crazy things, like climbing a ship's rigging and dancing a jig in the crow's nest; climbing down the stairs to the kitchen and "telling knock-knock jokes to the cook until all the important people went home."

But that's just the beginning.

She climbs into a pond (groove on Dusan Petricic's goldfish, one of which stares at an eye painted on the Queen's toenail!), kickboxes her way through fancy balls. However, one day she goes too far ad kicks a mean king in the ankles--wuth her hiking boots. If you have what it takes, you'll read on and see how the people wanted to put a stop to the queen's podiatric nonsense. A committee of "sages, wise women, wizards, fairy godmothers, and, of course, footmen" convene to decide the Feet's Fate.

In an improvisational triumph that I like to call the "Anti-Time Out," the advisors decide (and the Queen agrees) that she will follow proper foot decorum--except for one hour a day. That's when she can "raise a ruckus," "cut up," "act out," and generally be "foot loose and fancy free."

Such behavior, and such shoes need exuberant color illustrations, and that's what they get here, in Ecoline watercolor and pen and ink. BUt that's not important.

Look.

What we got here is a madcap, wildly inventive pictorial conglomeration. A sort of Mad Magazine, Maurice Sendak, "Fractured Flickers," German Expressionism, and Roccoco mix, blended with an innocence not seen since the early work of Bill Peet. Delightful fun, this is children's fiction of the highest order. A keeper, and perhaps one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year.

(Note: My fond impersonation aside, I really did like this book.)

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Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize (2007) nominee

Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2007

Queen Daisy can't help it - It's her feet that are misbehaving!

Queen Daisy had a great deal of trouble with her feet. They had a mind of their own and did not like behaving in a royal way. Proper shoes were out of the question, and sometimes her feet did not wear shoes at all! Her feet were especially naughty when Queen Daisy forced them to dress properly. At balls her feet would kick high in the air or tap-dance on the marble palace floors. Once, when a king from a neighboring kingdom brought his mean, bullying ways to Queen Daisy's court, her feet hauled off and kicked the king in the ankle. That's when a meeting had to be called of all the wise women and wizards and footmen in the kingdom to find a solution to Queen Daisy's terrible problem. And what a solution it turns out to be. Queen Daisy's feet will dance into the hearts of restless feet everywhere.

Sarah Ellis's wonderfully whimsical tale will ring a bell with all children and adults whose feet get restless. And Du_an Petricic illustrations may well encourage a little more unroyal behavior.

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