My Deadly Boots (Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler, illus by Samantha Campbell, Lothian)
This is the story of a pair of fantastically bright footy boots which may or may not be the source of a young Indigenous boy’s confidence, joy, inspiration, energy, power and sense of self. In a bouncing, bounding inventory of all the things the boots allow him to feel and be—‘my walking in two worlds boots’, ‘my run faster than my cousin-brother boots’, ‘my dream big boots’, ‘my give me confidence boots, my I’m somebody boots, my very own boots’—we see the young boy’s unbridled delight about the boots for which he saved for so long. He remains undaunted when judged by teachers, friends, family members and even a policeman for wearing them. His response to the policeman is particularly powerful in its deceptive simplicity: ‘my why aren’t blackfellas allowed flash boots? boots, my standing my ground boots, my truth telling boots’. But when he temporarily loses them, his grandfather reminds him that he doesn’t need shoes to define him and it’s not the boots that make him ‘too deadly’: he already had all those qualities on his own. Campbell’s soft warm drawings balance out the boy’s spirited energy, and the text has a punchy sense of addictive rhythm to it even though there’s no regular scheme or rhyme. The story is full of heart and has a genuine voice that blends colloquial cadences with earnest poetic cheer, reminding kids that strength isn’t determined by what’s on the outside.
Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is a freelance editor, writer, and reviewer, and has worked as a bookseller at The Hobart Bookshop for over 15 years.
Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.
