Flip-Flops

Children's Literature - Melinda Medley Sprinkle

Today is beach day and Penny and her mother are getting ready. Penny had forgotten it was her mother's day off from work, and she had already made plans to spend the day with her neighborhood friends. What was she going to do? After breakfast, Penny squeezes into last year's bathing suit and begins to search for her flip-flops. To her dismay, she can only find one. "What good is this?," complains Penny. Mama and Penny both search for the flip-flop, but it is nowhere to be found. Reluctantly, Penny hops on one foot to the car, and off they go. At the beach, she longs for a friend, and Meggie enters the scene. Together they discover many uses for Penny's single flip-flop. They pick up crabs, play catch, and rescue stranded starfish, all with Penny's flip-flop. At day's end, the two girls promise to be friends, and Penny decides that even though she has only one flip-flop, she has everything she needs. Child-like colored pencil drawings are colorful and unique. Children will love hearing and reading about Penny's flip-flop adventure to the beach.

School Library Journal

K-Gr 2--This sweet story features Penny, an African-American youngster who goes, somewhat unwillingly, to the beach with her mother. As they leave, Penny can only find one of her flip-flops and, once they reach their destination, she uses it to fan herself and dig in the sand. After a lonely, boring start, she meets red-headed Meggie and they become friends, tumbling, playing catch, chasing seagulls, and rescuing stranded starfish. At the end of the day, Penny writes Meggie's phone number on her flip-flop and promises to call. Together, the girls make "a perfect pair." Charming gouache and colored-pencil illustrations tell the story more vividly than the text, which is not as compelling. Crosby Bonsall's Mine's the Best (HarperCollins, 1973) is a better day-at-the-beach story, but this additional purchase will fill requests for summertime fare.--Lisa Falk, Los Angeles Public Library.

Kirkus Reviews

The premise is a bit of a stretch, but Cote's book about the creative potential inherent in even the most unpromising article—in this case a single flip-flop—speaks for wide applications. Penny, bound to the beach with her mother, can only locate one of her flip-flop sandals (a.k.a. thongs) and hops to the car. At the beach, Penny finds uses for the flip-flop, among them a fan, scoop, crab-catcher, sand-writer. Throughout the day, she finds friends and loses them, but in the end makes contact with a pal who scratches her home phone number on the flip-flop. The point is well taken: To everything there is a season, and all it takes is fertile imagination to let the possibilities curl toward the light. Appealing beach scenes in sunny colors take the lightweight concept as far as it can go, but amiably. (Picture book. 5-8)