Here's What You Do When You Can't Find Your Shoe (Ingenious Inventions for Pesky Problems

Written by Andrea Perry, Illustrated by Alan Snow

This collection of poems about inventions you never imagined is reminiscent of Shel Silverstein’s quirky, slightly grisly children’s poetry. Children will love the fabulously intricate color illustrations, which perfectly complement and bring to life Perry’s eccentric ideas. For example, “The Sure-Footed Shoe Finder,” a contraption that locates your lost shoe by matching the scent of its other pair, is illustrated with a number of complicated looking machines. One is a hodgepodge of wheels, half a bicycle handlebar, and some kind of metal device that seems to transfer the smell of the shoe, via a series of tubes and what looks like a plunger, to a rat trapped in a cage, who then leads the chase for the forgotten shoe. Meanwhile, the margins of the pages are filled with assorted lost shoes, including a high heel that looks suspiciously like a rat. In addition to fabulously fantastical drawings, there are several inventions in the mix that are simply too good to pass up, such as the Crumbunny. The Crumbunny a pink monster/ bunny hybrid with a vacuum for a nose, solves that age-old problem: What to do about those nasty little crumbs left behind after you’ve snacked in bed? “The snack-time pet knows what to do! He cleans the crumbs beneath the sheet, and when he’s full, sleeps at your feet.”


Rachel Meade
Culver Library Children's Room