I am drawn to books with interesting titles. Four Feet, Two Sandals was a title that immediately made me pick up the book and read it. I was not disappointed. (And then I felt the need to buy it.) This children’s book by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed was inspired by a refugee girl who wondered why there were no books written about children like her.
Four Feet, Two Sandals is the story of Lina and Feroza, two girls living in a refugee camp in Peshawar, a city on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Both girls have fled Afghanistan with their families. Each girl had family members who were killed in the war in Afghanistan.
Lina and Feroza met when each one of them grabbed one of a pair of sandals from a used clothing delivery at the refugee camp. At first, each girl takes her one sandal home. The next day, the girls meet again, and work together to solve the problem of four feet and two sandals.
As the girls live in the refugee camp, washing clothes in the river, standing in long lines for water and waiting for their names to appear on the list for a new home in America, their friendship develops and grows. The book depicts life in a refugee camp, a way of life that most of us have never experienced. The warm and engaging illustrations by Doug Chayka provide a visual description that accompanies the text beautifully.
This book would make a wonderful addition to any church library. Reading Four Feet, Two Sandals to a group of children, youth or adults would be an excellent way to springboard to a discussion about refugees. According to the authors’ note at the end of the book, at the time the book was written (2007) there were more than 20 million refugees worldwide; the majority of these refugees were children. This is a topic that is too big to ignore. I encourage you to read Four Feet, Two Sandals and to share it with others.
~Sally Hoelscher