ESTEVAN, Sask. — Estevan author Marie Donais Calder says she has heard a couple of lines repeatedly in her life: "What can you do?" and "I wouldn't want to be in that guy's shoes".
With that in mind – and armed with her background as an early childhood educator and her love of rhythm and rhyme – she came up with the title of her latest children's book, What can you do when you live in a Shoe?
"This is a metaphor for life. It's a children's picture book, for sure, and my illustrator took three years to painstakingly illustrate for me. The details are phenomenal and I'm really proud of her. It was her first attempt at illustrating."
She didn't know illustrator Eliece Getson of Guelph, Ont., before working on the project. Donais Calder said they came together through a mutual friend.
"I used this book, really, to illustrate how in our journeys through life, we all go through certain changes," she said. "Some of those are not welcomed, so we find ourselves in a new shoe, and we don't want to be in that shoe. What can we do about that?"
One of her brothers has been very ill for more than half of his life, she said, and his philosophy is very simple: even though he isn't physically able to get around, he still finds ways to help people on a very deep level.
"He says you can choose to be happy, you can choose to be sad, and that's up to you to make that choice."
Donais Calder said she hopes the book will help people in tough times and changes, even though it's a picture book for children.
She has written five children's book. She also also published 25 books in the Other Side series about her father Edmond's experiences as a Canadian Army mechanic in Germany following the Second World War; and Together Forever in the Clouds about the 21 airmen who died in a plane crash south of Estevan in 1946.
She has been focusing on children's books in recent years, and is now working on projects with her publisher about her story. One book will be on the impact of her father's death in a car accident when she was 11 years old, and the other will be about her eyesight issues.
