Book Review: Shoeshine Girl

Title: Shoeshine Girl

Author: Clyde Robert Bulla

Date: 1975

Publisher: Scholastic

ISBN: none

Length: 84 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Leigh Grant

Quote: “I want money in my pocket!”

Sarah Ida, spoiled city brat, age ten, is sent to a smaller town to stay with an aunt who tells her, “That’s just what your mother doesn’t want.” If Sarah Ida wants pocket money, she’ll have to get a job.

So, this being 1975, Sarah Ida goes out and gets a job as part-time assistant to the nice old shoeshine man. She learns to respect him, even the silly little tin medal he treasures as a souvenir, and eventually earns the right to keep it as her own souvenir of her own good work.

What’s not to love about a sweet, simple, feel-good kind of teaching story for children considering part-time jobs? I’m all in favor of part-time jobs for ten-year-olds and even younger childrne. when children are old enough to want to spend money, they’re old enough to think about ways to earn it. But I think this book might have been written a little too far “down.” Sarah Ida is brighter and more mature than many ten-year-olds; the size of this book and the number of drawings suggest that it’s written for seven- or eight-year-olds. When I was ten, I would have dismissed Shoeshine Girl as a picture book.

(Also, in 1975, very few men were still earning enough money lubricating other men’s shiny leather shoes to need assistants. I remember my father shining his shoes and waxing his boots in the 1970s, at home, and remember a cartoon of an older man joking that he’d hidden something in a safe place where his teenaged son would never see it—the shoeshine box. My generation usually wore canvas or synthetic shoes. Shoeshine Girl might have been based on something that really happened, but my guess would be that it happened closer to 1945 than to 1975.)

So...to adults looking for a book to give to a young reader, I’d say, know your students. Some ten-year-olds like a short easy read and might enjoy Shoeshine Girl enough to give oral reports explaining that it’s not a “babyish” book. Some are looking for more than one hour of reading pleasure.

And be prepared to explain to young readers that these days, unfortunately, people have been made afraid of any social bonding between a child and an adult, of anybody hiring anybody, and in many places of people even setting up in business for themselves.

To buy Shoeshine Girl here, please send $5 per book, $5 per package, and $1 per online payment to the appropriate address at the bottom of the screen. At least nine more books of this size will fit into one $5 package.