Dave Eggers’s Her Right Foot, illustrated by debut artist Shawn Harris and clocking in at over a hundred pages, is a picture book receiving a fair amount of Newbery buzz. Heavy Medal, School Library Journal’s mock Newbery blog, has placed the book on their long list. In two separate posts they, and their commenters, have weighed in on the writing. We here at Calling Caldecott, of course, are considering the illustrations.

This is a book that leaves a lump in my throat and mist in my eyes. (Okay, fine. They are tears. TEARS, I tell you.) Eggers spends the first half of the book sharing the history of (and some facts about) the creation of the Statue of Liberty, her transfer from France to the United States, and what she symbolizes. That is, he writes about the symbols people most often talk about and what they mean (Lady Liberty as a whole, her torch, the spikes on her crown, etc.). But then, midway through the book, Eggers shifts his focus (and his tone) to one particular part of the statue – her right foot. Look closely, he implores readers. She is in mid-stride. She is on the move. For the rest of the book, he writes about what that means: “If the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of freedom, then how can she stand still?” It’s a timely book, given the worldwide refugee crises we read about in the news and given our current administration’s immigration policies.

Harris’s minimalist illustrations are rendered via construction paper and India ink. I love to see construction paper at work in picture books. (Children find it accessible and may even be inspired to get out their own paper and scissors to tell their stories.) I like how — particularly on the book’s endpapers, which feature Lady Liberty’s torch, as if we are standing right inside of it, looking out over the railing — you can see Harris's tiny scissor cuts and the imperfections in the construction paper. This medium also adds a subtle visual depth to many moments in the book, such as in an early spread featuring a Parisian sipping coffee outside of a café, the statue high about the city. (Fact: she was first assembled in Paris!)

But back to those endpapers: both the opening and closing endpapers feature the close-up view of the railing of the statue's torch, but the opening ones are brown and the closing ones, green. I love this. In the book, Eggers writes about how the statue was originally brown, yet over the years, the copper has oxidized, leaving her the blue-green color she is now. The book’s turning point, during which Eggers shifts to discuss her raised foot and what it symbolizes, includes a spread with merely text; the left side of the spread is brown, and the right is green. In fact, the dominating color for the book’s entire first half is this brown, and the second half features much of that green. Perfect.

Many aspects of the medium and Harris’s style are perfectly matched to (and support) Eggers’s text, as well as his tone — so much so that I can’t envision any other medium at work here. (Imagine if this were illustrated in, say, lavish oil paints. Um, nope.) I love the simplicity of the compositions and what Harris draws our attention to on the page. In an early spread — “You may have also heard of something called the Statue of Liberty” — we see only Lady Liberty on the left, and she is surrounded by fluffy white clouds (and a few birds). Nothing more is needed there. In another spread, composed of three short sentences, where Eggers prepares readers for his theory about why her foot is mid-stride, Harris illustrates two birds up in the bright blue sky — a stirring choice for what follows: musings on immigrants looking for freedom from oppression.

There’s also much humor in the first half of the book. As but one example, there’s a spread where de Laboulaye and Bartholdi discuss the statue's design. Harris illustrates the two men dramatically discussing it over a meal, Bartholdi brandishing a banana in the air as if it’s a torch and holding his menu the way Lady Liberty eventually holds the book in her hand (which is featured on the book’s cover, so be sure to lift the dustjacket!). All the subtle moments of humor are balanced in the book’s second half by the more contemplative tone that dominates; at one point (“Liberty and freedom from oppression are not things you get or grant by standing around like some kind of statue”), Harris illustrates a Red Crescent refugee camp. And that closing spread, where we see Lady Liberty meeting the poor, the tired, and the struggling to breathe free right there “in the sea”? She strides through the water to greet them, “not content to wait.” There’s that lump in my throat again.

I’ll be curious to see in a little under two weeks now if this book got a foot in the door with the Caldecott committee — and even the Newbery committee. It’s almost show time, everyone. (The countdown clock is up and running!)

 

Read the Horn Book review of Her Right Foot here.