Teachers’ notes for One red shoe

The Teachers’ notes I wrote for Wilkins Farago Publishing are now online. I hope lots of school libraries buy their own copy of the picture book, One red shoe, and get good use out of it!

The notes can be downloaded as a PDF here.

When I was testing the book out with our Stage 3 students, even the Stage 2 students were intrigued, although they only really discussed the red symbolism throughout, not the stronger themes about war/unrest in the Gaza Strip, but they came up with this digital slideshow:

We are surrounded by RED

Class 3/4L recently had an extra session in the school library, so we decided to create a digital slideshow, inspired by the powerful cover art of the new picture book, One red shoe, by Karin Gruss & Tobias Krejtschi (Wikins Farago, 2014). The book, set in the war-torn Gaza Strip, features black and white illustrations through, with the dramatic use of spot colour on a US-style, Chuck Taylor All-Stars red canvas shoe, to persuade the readers and viewers with symbolism.


Surrounded by RED

The resulting, jointly-constructed text of this digital slideshow, created during a Circle Time brainstorming session, is quite reminiscent of the colour poems featured in the now-classic book, Hailstones and halibut bones by Mary O’Neill (1961), although the students were not exposed to that particular work. Yet. Red objects featured in the images came mainly from the school library environment, but also a few from my personal digital albums.

Download free Teachers’ notes for One red shoe.