Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin

Hey, Story Seekers!

Pete has new white shoes.

Beautiful white shoes.

The sort of white shoes that make a parent spot a puddle from three blocks away and start getting nervous.

Pete?

Pete isn't nervous.

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, written by Eric Litwin and illustrated by James Dean, was the first book in what became the enormous Pete the Cat series.

And the whole thing starts with a blue cat, four white shoes, and absolutely no ability to walk around a mess.

Readit has already pointed out that if Pete cared this much about keeping his shoes white, he could simply look where he's walking.

Readit has identified a flaw in the system.

Book Breakdown

Pete loves his white shoes.

So naturally, the universe begins attacking them.

First, Pete steps into strawberries.

White shoes become red shoes.

This seems like the moment for outrage.

Pete disagrees.

He keeps walking and changes his song to match his newly red footwear.

Then come blueberries.

Blue shoes.

Still singing.

Then mud.

Brown shoes.

Pete continues.

Finally he steps into water, which gets the mess off but leaves his shoes wet.

At this point I've stopped blaming the ground.

Pete, buddy.

Eyes forward.

The story runs on a wonderfully simple pattern. Pete walks into a mess. The book asks what color his shoes turned. Kids get to answer. Then comes the big question: did Pete cry about it?

Goodness, no.

Back to the song.

Eric Litwin didn't merely write repetition into the story. He built music and audience participation into it. That's a big difference. Litwin is a working musician, and the book is a companion to a song he performs, which explains a lot about how it's constructed.

Kids can predict colors. They can answer questions. They can sing. They can call the ending before it arrives. Once they've heard the pattern twice, they're not waiting quietly for the adult to finish.

Good.

Quiet isn't always the goal.

James Dean's Pete is equally important to the operation.

He's a long blue cat with enormous feet and a face that rarely seems impressed by anything that just happened. Those big shoes make the color changes impossible to miss. Dean's watercolor artwork gives Pete's world plenty of bright color without making every page frantic.

Pete stays Pete.

That's the visual joke and part of the point.

Strawberries?

Fine.

Blueberries?

Fine.

Mud?

Still Pete.

Even when the shoes change, his basic temperature doesn't.

Cool cat.

Very questionable pedestrian.

For teachers and librarians: Guided Reading Level K · ATOS 1.5 · grades PreK to 1 · 40 pages. HarperCollins, March 2, 2010. It took a Picture Book Honor in the 2011 E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards and the 2011 Missouri Building Block Picture Book Award, which Missouri schoolchildren vote on themselves.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

This is a performance book.

I don't mean you can perform it.

I mean you're leaving a lot on the table if you don't.

Litwin is a musician and a storyteller, and you can feel that in the construction. The questions aren't there to move the plot along. They're openings for the room.

What color did it turn his shoes?

Stop.

Let the kids answer.

Did Pete cry?

Oh, they're going to answer that one.

Then you've got the song.

Now everybody's in.

As somebody who's spent a long time performing for children, I like books that understand participation is more than asking a question once the story is over. Kids don't want to wait for the committee meeting afterward. Give them something to do now.

Pete does.

And here's the clever bit. All that singing and color guessing is carrying a second idea underneath it.

Things go wrong.

Sometimes the thing you like gets messed up.

You can spend your day furious about it, or you can adjust and keep moving.

Pete may take that philosophy farther than most of us.

If I bought brand-new white shoes and immediately marched through a mountain of strawberries, I would have at least one follow-up question.

Pete doesn't.

That's why he's Pete.

I also wouldn't push the message. The book states its point clearly enough on its own. Kids don't need an adult standing over the last page explaining resilience for another six minutes.

Sing the song.

Ask which shoes looked best.

Ask what Pete might step in next.

That last one could get interesting.

One honest note for repeat readings. Pete barely changes emotionally, which is his entire character but also means you get very little tension out of him. For this particular book I think that's fine.

The audience supplies the energy Pete refuses to.

Readit's Review

I want blue shoes.

Not shoes that got blue because I stepped in blueberries.

NEW blue shoes.

There's a difference.

I like guessing the colors because strawberries are easy and blueberries are easy and mud is brown.

But then WATER.

Wet is not a color!

That is sneaky.

Also, Pete needs to watch where he's going.

How do you step in that many giant piles of stuff?

If I stepped in strawberries with new white shoes, I would probably be upset.

I would not sing immediately.

Maybe later.

And if I was walking with Pete, after the blueberries I would say, "Pete, let me go first."

My favorite thing is answering the question about whether he cries, because after the first time you know what the answer is.

GOODNESS, NO.

See?

I already know it.

What Others Think

Pete has a pretty big cheering section. Goodreads shows 4.35 out of 5 from 60,896 ratings, with about 2,530 written reviews.

The reviews that were most useful to me came from people who had actually run this book at a storytime. Mari wrote: "It has a wide range of appeal (good for younger and older storytime groups) and has lots of opportunities for audience participation. You can sing with Pete, guess what color his shoes will turn based on what he steps in." Erica tried it on a friend's three-and-a-half-year-old: "We sang Pete's song and he was grooving to the beat. He loved telling us what color Pete's shoes were going to be next."

And H Balikov described the thing I'd most want to see happen: "She knows the story well enough that when I pause, she will" fill in the rest.

That's the whole design working.

Emily May gives us the grown-up version: "I got this for my son, but I'm not gonna lie, Pete the Cat's philosophy on life really speaks to me too."

Marya found the best description of the book anybody has managed: "If cool jazz wrote a children's book, this is it."

One note worth passing along. The reviewer Tina Loves To Read has read it many times to twin boys, and writes that "my Autistic son really loves this book. It teaches just to let things go with teaching colors." If you're looking for a predictable, patterned, low-anxiety read-aloud, that's a real data point.

Now the criticism, because it exists and it's fair. Tim points out that this first book doesn't look like the rest of the series: "Pete looks different (more like a regular cat)," none of his friends have shown up yet, and the proportions are strange enough that, in Tim's words, "even my daughter asked 'Why are his feet so big?!?'"

Good question, and Readit would like it on the record that he asked first.

One last warning, and it isn't a criticism so much as a public service. If your child falls in love with this book, you will not hear that song once.

You will hear it again.

And again.

And Pete will keep walking.

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

This isn't joke-joke-joke comedy.

It's participation comedy.

Pete walks into another mess. Kids know what's coming. They guess the color. They answer the question. They sing.

Then he does it again.

James Dean's giant-footed, permanently unbothered cat supplies the visual fun, and Litwin's musical pattern hands the adult reader excellent timing without much effort.

I'd expect smiles, singing, shouting, and a good number of laughs.

Four feels right.

Pete would probably give himself a five.

Pete is very relaxed about these things.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd put Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes straight into the preschool and kindergarten read-aloud pile, especially for ages 3 to 7.

It's a strong pick for kids who like to participate, children learning colors, classrooms that enjoy music and movement, and little readers who already know enough of the pattern to proudly "read" parts along with you.

And learn the tune.

Seriously.

You can read this one straight, but Litwin built it to be sung, and reader after reader describes children joining in.

The message is simple without being useless. Your shoes got messed up.

Okay.

What now?

Pete keeps going.

That's a pretty good trick for a blue cat to teach.

If your kid likes a book where the grown-up doesn't get to sit there quietly running the whole operation, there's one of mine worth knowing about. In Look! There Are No Dinos Inside Of This Book, the participation comes from the other direction. The narrator insists there aren't any dinosaurs while the pictures prove him wrong, so knowing more than the voice on the page is exactly what gives kids permission to jump in.

Pete sings.

The dinosaur kids shout.

Either way, storytime has escaped containment.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit