The King with Dirty Feet

This new version of an old and delightful tale from India and Bangladesh has been created by the acclaimed story teller, Sally Pomme Clayton. It is beautifully written, and like all her writing, reads aloud very well. In a beautiful palace in India lives a king, a happy king, whose kingdom is filled with trees, flowers, animals and a flowing river. He has everything he wants and he is very happy. However, the one thing he hates is bathtime. That King has not washed for a week; a month; he has not washed for a whole year! And he has begun to smell. Sadly, he himself tires of his stink and decides it must be time for a bath. The news spreads fast, and crowds come to the river side to watch the King washing and scrubbing his body. However, when he emerges from the water and dries himself he realises his feet are still dirty. Despite renewed efforts to scrub them clean, the King is frustrated by his still dirty feet, and demands his servants rid the land of the dirt. The sweeping and flooding of tShe land has no effect, and finally the people alight upon the idea of covering up the land. And so the people create a monster cloth, from the school to the well, from the temple to the palace, and all the way to the river. It takes the wise words of an old, old man to tell the king that now they would have nowhere to grow flowers and grass for the animals, no fruit or vegetables for the people to eat. SNIP, SNIP, SNIP, goes the old, old man, and from the wondrous cloth he creates the first pair of shoes! The illustrator captures the emotions of all the characters in bold, striking colours, and readers can feel the delight on the faces of the newly shod people at the end of the book. A great book for dramatisation and for oral story telling.