Reviews for Shoeshine Girl

The average rating for Shoeshine Girl based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-03-04 00:00:00 Vic Cabral I love the writing of Clyde Robert Bulla. From the first time I picked up and read The Chalk Box Kid, I was enchanted by the sensitive ease of the stories that he has to tell, of the way that the tender caring inside all of his good characters (and even some of the bad) shows through like a watermark on every page. There's something really magical about reading any Clyde Robert Bulla book, but I have to say that Shoeshine Girl is arguably his magnum opus. We aren't given a lot of detail about ten-year-old Sarah Ida's life before the opening pages, which begin with her arrival via train at her Aunt Claudia's house. It seems that Sarah Ida's parents had a none too positive view of their daughter's overall attitude, and frequent clashes between Sarah Ida and her ill mother were making the family environment a growingly hostile one. Sarah Ida takes a diametrically opposed view to that of her parents about who's at fault in the situation, but what really matters now is that she's living with her aunt for the time being, and she has to find a way to make the best of it. Sarah Ida never could have dreamed of the changes that would come about in her mindset over the next several weeks, and to be honest, I as the reader was also caught off guard. I generally think that I have a pretty good handle on the type of material that will be covered in a Clyde Robert Bulla short novel, but Shoeshine Girl mixes it up by throwing a number of unexpected curves. Which characters will become major players and which will affect the narrative from a less direct perspective is hard to discern ahead of time, and in that kind of storytelling atmosphere, real surprises can happen. And when it comes to Sarah Ida and the community of friends that she eventually comes to see around her in her aunt's hometown, a surprise is almost always waiting just on the other side of the page. Shoeshine Girl addresses a number of emotional issues, most from the perspective of Sarah Ida. She feels unwanted and even abandoned by her parents, and oppressed by what she sees as the unreasonable behavioral demands of her Aunt Claudia. Regardless of what Sarah Ida might say, she wants to be close to people, but in a new town that is really only a temporary stop, she knows that there might not be much point in putting down roots. She wants to go home, but she's not enthusiastic about the idea of rejoining her parents; so, what's a girl to do who feels that she has already been deemed by the world to be unfit after only ten years of life? Where can she turn to when even her parents have hurt her? Given much freedom to do what she wishes, Sarah Ida finds herself an unlikely job as a shoeshine girl at a little stand in town. It's not a glamorous position and requires hard physical labor, but it offers Sarah Ida paid wages. However, most important, it is through her employment at the stand and her uncertain, slowly growing relationship with the owner, Mr. Winkler, that Sarah Ida first begins to glimpse the first burgeoning rays of what could be nothing but a light in the darkness, illuminating the tunnel from the other side. What follows is truly something of a mini miracle, changing the hearts of more than one person. It's remarkable how Clyde Robert Bulla is able to give us such a meaningful, substantial story in only eighty-four pages of large print, many of which are taken up by full-page illustrations. Shoeshine Girl is a wonder of writing, a demonstration that no matter how brief the storytelling, a good author who understands human emotion is never limited in his or her ability to touch us all with a marvelous tale. I would give three and a half stars to Shoeshine Girl, and I strongly considered rounding up that in-between rating to four stars.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-08 00:00:00 Susan Ashner Very short read, but packs a lot in and is enjoyable, too. The more I read of Bulla, the more I want to. And apparently somebody else at my new little old library does, too, because at the beginning of this there's the list of Other Books by... and several of them are circled. Sure, technically it's defacing public property, but I think it's cute to see.