Customer Reviews

Cold Feet

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Cold Feet was awarded the Boston Globe's Horn book award for this year. The book is a droll, macabre tale with just the right mix of humor and gore to delight kids. Bob Parker's paintings keep it vigoruos and fun.

This is a most wonderous take on a traditional Scottish folk tale. This story begs to be read aloud and works wonderfully in storytelling sessions.

Willie McPhee gets more than he bargins for when he takes the boots off a man he finds frozen in the woods. The story has a nice "gross-out" element that will appeal greatly to kids. DeFelice tells the story with excellent pacing that sets the reader up for the payoff at the end.

Robert Andrew Parker's sketchy ink and watercolor gives the story movement and allows the reader to fill in with their own imagination.

I enjoyed the writing and the illustrations very much, and I liked the way the story developed quite logically, with cause-and-effect consequences. But when the corpse came to reclaim its feet, I felt let down. Nothing in the story prior to this had prepared us for the final page: there were no hints that the corpse might come alive, no foreshadowing. The ending seemed tacked on just to be macabre.

We found this book at the library and my seven year old son loved it! We read it during the day and as soon as my husband came home from work my son insisted he sit down and read it with him. A week later my son asked to take the book over to his friends house because he had told him the story and his friend wanted to see the book also. How great! My five year old daughter also was fascinated with the story and refered back to it several times in a positive manner. I had worried also that it might be too scary for the kids but instead it is a story that has intrigued them and definitely one they will remember.

This scared the wits out of my son after it was read to him in the school library. I am sure it's a wonderfully scary book for the older crowd, but if my 8 year old is scared, maybe it shouldn't be marketed to third graders unless it comes with a nightlight.

My son excels as a reader and checked this out on one of his preschool trips to the library. It is definitely for older kids, maybe seven or eight. He didn't understand the plot very well and trying to explain it to him proved to be... interesting. I would suggest steering clear of this if your child is 5 or younger.

I can't believe I just read my 6-year-old a children's book about corpse desecration. We were both horrified. I had no idea what to expect when she pulled her selections from the school library out of her backpack, but I never would have imagined it would involve mutilating a dead body and playing pranks with dismembered feet. Charming. Just charming.

A morbid book apparently based on an old British folk story about a homeless bagpiper that finds a dead man in the woods and decides to take his boots. Since they won't come off easily he breaks them off, legs and all, and takes the severed limbs with him. When a farmer refuses to let him stay in his house and sends him to the barn, the piper decides to play a joke on him, thaw the feet out and give them to the cow to munch on. The farmer flees in horror. This is a downright creepy and scary book that is not appropriate for children ages 5-8 at all. I'll be throwing my copy in the trash rather than donating it and risk having an innocent child pick it up. Would give it zero stars if I could!

Basically this book is about a man (Willie) who takes the boots off a dead man who he finds in the woods. Since it is so cold outside, the legs of the dead man snap off when Willie steals the boots and the feet are still inside the boots. Then Willie feeds the feet of the dead man to a cow. Come on parents, wake up!! Is this book really appropriate for children? NO, no it is not.