Her Right Foot by Dave Eggers (review)

The titular foot under consideration here belongs to the Statue of Liberty, and Eggers looks at it from every angle, literally and figuratively, to illuminate the icon's history and to suss out its meaning. Kids who enjoyed Eggers' This Bridge Will Not Be Gray (BCCB 1/16) will immediately note and celebrate the reprise of that title's wry wit, the broken fourth wall, the mock gravitas of tone, and the arrant fascination of the book's factoids. Just as readers find their rhythm chugging along a familiar path, however, Eggers directs them to look at the angled right foot, which never seems to appear in pictures: "[N]o one talks about the fact that she is walking! This 305-foot statue is going somewhere!" Talk about it he does, and in his signature clipped prose, he leads readers to consider that relationship between Liberty's implied movement and her role in greeting waves upon waves of immigrants: "[W]elcoming the poor, the tired, the struggling to be free. She is not content to wait. She must meet them in the sea." Few authors can pull off an impassioned essay on patriotism without devolving into the maudlin, the saccharine, the ham-fisted, but with the aid of Harris's mixed-media pictures, which break down the looming statue and soaring skylines into details that span a long, horizontal format, Eggers delivers a title that's both thought-provoking and a readaloud delight. Accessible and appealing to a broad range of ages, this is an excellent candidate for One School, One Book initiatives. Final art not seen.