When Arturo the Parrot, whose job it was to help greet people as they came into The Friendly Shoe Store, picked up and repeated a small boy’s disgruntled comment, “Shoes are for the birds!,” it certainly changed the course of his life. This is Eudora Welty’s only book specifically written for young readers.
Eudora Welty is author of many novels and story collections, including The Optimist’s Daughter (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), Losing Battles, The Ponder Heart, The Robber Bridegroom, A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, as well as three collections of her photographic work—Photographs, Country Churchyards, and One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression, all published by University Press of Mississippi. Beth Krush (1918-2009) was half of an American husband-and-wife team of illustrators (with Joe Krush; born May 18, 1918), who worked primarily on children’s books. The Krushes may be best known for the US editions of all five Borrowers books by Mary Norton, published by Harcourt 1953-1961 and 1982, a series inaugurated very early in their careers.
