Because of a Shoe
by Julie Fogliano; illus. by Marla Frazee
Preschool, Primary    Knopf    40 pp.
2/26    9780593707401    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780593707425    $6.99

Fogliano’s stream-of-consciousness, one-continuous-sentence text details a parent’s frustration with a recalcitrant child—but also their mutual unconditional love. The focus shifts smoothly and expertly from the child’s actions (refusing to put on a shoe, screaming, and flopping onto the floor) to the parent’s loss of patience (making their “maddest face” and “being loud and yelling”) to the eventual recovery of their true selves (“we are still us / (funny sweet us) / and you still love me / and i still love you”). It’s Frazee’s art—in Prismacolor pencil and vinyl paint—that makes the text into a story. She brings us two distinct characters in a warm-hued though minimalistic living-room setting, which then morphs into a dark, mostly monochromatic fantasy world where the furniture is subsumed by an ocean wave in which a shoe-seeking shark circles, a shoe is thrown off a cliff, and the depths of a desolate dump must be explored. Frazee gradually re-introduces color on the spread where the emotional storm begins to pass, to both participants’ evident relief. Next comes the addition of full-color, detailed, cheerful backgrounds and the clever reveal of the occasion for which donning the shoe had been necessary in the first place: a birthday party with an inflatable bouncy house (no shoes allowed!). Throughout, both text and art portray the situation with authenticity and understanding—and welcome flashes of humor.

From the January/February 2026 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.