Benjamin’s Blue Feet

PreS-Gr 1–Benjamin, a blue-footed booby, enjoys his life collecting and naming beach trash, until the day he finds a cracked mirror hidden in the sand. Looking at his reflection for the first time, Benjamin becomes embarrassed by his long beak, wide wings, and blue feet (which he could surely see without the aid of a mirror). In desperation, he attempts to use his garbage treasures to hide his features, but these nonsensical efforts are not funny enough to provoke laughs nor grave enough to convey real sadness. Swaddled in unidentifiable rubbish, Benjamin quickly discovers that his modifications mean he can’t swim, fish, or fly with his booby friends—and he comes to appreciate why he looks the way he does. The digital illustrations never quite capture the textured charm of a real blue-footed booby or the biological variety of the Galapagos Islands. Recurring rhymes and consonance inject some energy into the text, but readers have seen such simplistic paeans to self-acceptance before.