The Feet in the Gym
By Teri Daniels
Illustrated by Travis Foster
1999
Synopsis
Handy Bob needs to keep on his toes at the lively Lakeside gym. He swings his mop and swabs with pride and flings the soapy suds aside. This lovable school custodian is soon at his wit's end, however, as bustling students trek dirt, grime, grit and slime across his freshly mopped floor. But help is afoot! Without missing a beat, the children clear the mess with a wild and wonderful solution.
Excerpt
The children call me Handy Bob.
My hands can handle any job.
By far the hardest job I do
is wiping after every shoe…
Western boot or wooden clog,
sneaker from a morning jog,
slipper, sandal, soccer cleat—
all the shoes on all the feet!
Reviews and Recognition
Discovery Toys selection, Spring 2002
ELBA Award winner, 1st place
(Elementary School Book Award)
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Mockingbird Award, 2000
from the librarians and teachers of Abilene Texas
20 Outstanding New Picture Books
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE): "A recommended read-aloud. Teri Daniels’s The Feet in the Gym takes listeners through a day in the life of a hardworking custodian named Handy Bob as he bustles and buffs, swabs and swings his mop, keeping the school’s gym floor free from footprints. The story offers good clean fun through lively rhyme. Travis Foster’s colorful, shiny cartoon illustrations highlight Handy Bob’s plight as footprint after footprint continues to appear, in spite of his best efforts."
The Children’s Bookwatch: “Teri Daniels’ lively and original story is splendidly illustrated...Highly recommended.”
Children’s Literature: “The rhyming text creates a rhythm that adds to the humor of Bob’s dilemma.”
School Library Journal (SLJ): “Good clean fun.”
Booklist: "The story will delight children as they see their school through the eyes of the one who cleans up."
Chicago Reviewer, Esme Codell: "Run don't walk to get his book.. for laughs and creative extensions, other read-alouds might well "pail' in comparison."
Language Arts, Vol. 78, No. 1, September 2000
Magazine article: "Touching the Heart: Books that
Amplify Life"
Another book that invites curious response in young children
is Teri Daniels' The Feet in the Gym (1999). This could be
renamed the "custodian's lament, for no matter how much Handy
Bob tries to clean up after the "western boot or wooden clog,
sneaker from a morning jog, slipper, sandal, soccer cleat, all
the shoes on all the feet" (unpaged), a new group of children
walk on his clean gymnasium floor. The first-grade children
in Jenine Loesing's class initially asked for the book to be
read every day for a week. They chanted along with the rhyming
text and reexamined the pictures on a daily basis. They were
fascinated with Foster's "shiny" illustrations and one
resourceful child visited the website printed on the inside of
the book to find out how those illustrations were made. Jenine
used their interest in the book to springboard into math
investigation. She asked the children, " If our class walked
across Bob's wet gym floor, what would it look like? How many
footprints do you think our class would leave on the wet gym
floor?" They explored mathematical concepts such as number
sense and estimation.