Ellen Wittlinger’s Someone Else’s Shoes is a family story for 10 year olds about a girl writing stand-up while everything at home falls apart.<\/p>\n
Izzy Shepherd wants to be a comedian. She learned it from her dad, back when they’d watch stand-up together and fall over sideways laughing.<\/p>\n
Then he moved to Boston. Now he’s remarried with a baby coming, and when she visits he’s too busy or too sad or too in love to watch anything at all.<\/p>\n
Her mum is a nurse and has started going out with the man who does Izzy’s teeth. He has a son in high school that everyone at school is frightened of.<\/p>\n
And her cousin Oliver has moved in, along with Uncle Henderson, who sits in a rocking chair looking out of the window and hasn’t touched his guitar in weeks.<\/p>\n
Izzy is horrible to Oliver and she knows she is. She’s decided being annoyed with him is kinder than being sorry for him, because being pitied feels like being a mangy dog nobody wants to touch.<\/p>\n
She’s wrong, obviously. Watching her slowly work that out is the whole book.<\/p>\n
The best scene early on is Izzy in front of her mirror in pyjamas that are too small, trying to build a joke the way her dad taught her. What’s the deal with school? You have to do well enough that your parents don’t panic, but not so well that you end up on the maths team.<\/p>\n
Oliver laughs. An actual bark of a laugh, from a boy who hasn’t laughed at anything in weeks, and you can feel Izzy notice it.<\/p>\n
Worth knowing before you hand this one over, and it’s a big one. Oliver’s mum took her own life six weeks before the story starts, and the book does not keep it offstage. Izzy hides round the corner of the porch and hears the grown-ups say exactly how she did it. A visiting boy asks Oliver straight out why she did it and whether she left a note, and Oliver answers him.<\/p>\n
Uncle Henderson’s depression is right there on the page too, in a man who can’t tell if it’s three in the afternoon or the middle of the night.<\/p>\n
It’s never sensationalised. Izzy’s mum says plainly that Felicia was ill, and that mental illness is an illness. But it is a very heavy load for the younger end of this shelf, and if anything like it sits near your family, please read it yourself first.<\/p>\n
For an older reader who’s already asked you these questions, this is a kind place to meet them, and a book you’d want to be nearby for.<\/p>\n
Izzy watches Mrs. Doubtfire on a loop, which makes a neat next step. Anne Fine’s Madame Doubtfire is the book behind the film, and it’s about three children carted back and forth between two parents who cannot be in a room together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ellen Wittlinger’s Someone Else’s Shoes is a family story for 10 year olds about a girl writing stand-up while everything at home falls apart. Izzy Shepherd wants to be a comedian. She learned it from her dad, back when they’d watch stand-up together and fall over sideways laughing. Then he moved to Boston. Now he’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11423,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7999,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Anne Fine's Madame Doubtfire","lr_seo_hook":"A girl builds a stand-up act while her family quietly comes apart."},"book_tag":[20],"age_group":[29],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[294],"class_list":["post-8664","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-real-life-books","age_group-books-for-10-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-ellen-wittlinger"],"yoast_title":"Someone Else’s Shoes by Ellen Wittlinger | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A girl builds a stand-up act while her family quietly comes apart. For ages 10+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n