The Magic Boot

Barbara Robertson is the author of Wilfrid Laurier: The Great
Conciliator and co-author of The Well-Filled Cupboard.

The Magic Boot is an elegant trifle about a basic childhood problem:
being the wrong size and nothing you can do about it. Pipo’s feet get
larger and larger, and though the problem seems to be solved by “a
pair of magic boots,” these boots prove to have an exciting life of
their own.

Pratt’s illustrations are gorgeous. The colors of the medieval
Italianate townscape glow like the colors in stained-glass windows. The
characters, though dressed in an appropriate medieval way, have a more
contemporary cartoonlike quality. It is possible to wonder whether these
two idioms quite fit, but I think perhaps the contemporary note adds a
dash of vigor to the composition.

Simard’s prose is vigorous, too, and the story rises to a climax that
is at first glance wonderfully satisfying; but then doubt creeps in a
little. The Magic Boot is not perhaps quite as splendid as My Dog Is an
Elephant, but it is clearly out of the same stable and very
entertaining. Recommended.