‘Smoot: A Rebellious Shadow’ by Michelle Cuevas and illustrated by Sydney Smith is a story about how sometimes it is worthwhile to stray outside of what you ordinarily know and take for granted and see what life is like “outside the lines” instead of staying perfectly inside them in every aspect of life.

Smoot the Shadow feels stuck. The boy to whom he is attached never does anything out of the ordinary – or at least nothing that Smoot feels excited for as days continually go by. When he finds himself free of his boy, his life becomes filled with color, both of the literal and metaphorical variety. He goes off into the world seeking everything he feels he has been missing, encountering colors, people, animals, and a whole new life he is eager to keep. That is, until he realizes that shadows can hardly overtake everything, and if they do, the consequences could be truly unwieldy. So he sets out to help everyone live out their own dreams, and while doing so, he finds he is living his own, helping others to realize their own truth through the beauty of freedom and being able to do as one wishes, within reason.

All the while, Smoot’s boy has been following his shadow, watching the magic happen, and he himself decides that being more like Smoot is the best course of action. Smoot adds color to not only his life, but the lives of others – most especially his boy, which reflects back on him since he gets to live the rest of his days attached to the boy. The story teaches that rebellion is not always a bad idea, so long as it is done in a way that teaches a lesson and becomes part of the rules by which one lives.

You can find ‘Smoot: A Rebellious Shadow’ by Michelle Cuevas here.

*Review originally posted at YABooksCentral.com*