Shoes: Their History in Words and Pictures
Grade 6-8.  Those sensibly padded work shoes, feathery mules, or expensive loafers you're wearing may reveal clues to your personality. So what could we guess about Marie Antoinette, who had to index her huge shoe wardrobe, or Napoleon's Josephine, with her 521 pairs of dainty footwear? Filled with vignettes such as these and interesting, little-known facts, this book traces the history of shoes, but in a much more readable style than its somewhat dry title suggests. Readers learn, for example, how Roman emperors rewarded commoners with the privilege of wearing special red or purple ceremonial sandals, how medieval laws regulated the length of shoes' toes, and how wearing aristocratic shoes was potentially dangerous during the French Revolution. The short chapters are chronologically arranged, providing a good historical overview of classical to modern times with just the right scope for the intended audience. Ample black-and-white drawings illustrate almost every style of footwear mentioned in the text. A complete index and extensive bibliography are included, with an indication of books that might interest younger readers. Using the chapter about shoe detectives as a connection, this title could be paired nicely in a booktalk with Donna Jackson's The Bone Detectives (Little, Brown, 1996).?Leigh Ann Jones, Carroll Middle School, Southlake, TXCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.