Issue #0

Mrs. Toggle's Beautiful Blue Shoe

Plot

Grade 1-4-Spring weather puts a kick in Mrs. Toggle's class and in her foot. Feeling like a kid again, she joins the children's kickball game, loses a shoe up a tree, and calls upon her students to help her get it down. As in Mrs. Toggle's Zipper (1990) and Mrs. Toggle and the Dinosaur (1991, both Four Winds), Principal Stickler thinks following the rules will solve the problem. Some of the tongue-in-cheek sound bites will go right over the heads of younger children, but older ones will enjoy the problem-solving aspect of this story as well as the subtle humor. Alley's chunky, multicultural characters are reminiscent of Marshall and Allard's work with their black-line, watercolor figures. However, the frumpy Mrs. Toggle makes for a more believable, lovable character than Miss Viola Swamp. Another winner in Pulver's vignettes of classroom situations.

Joyce Richards, Prairie Grove Elementary School, AR.