Louise Cheese returns in this second picture-book devoted to her adventures, following upon Louise the Big Cheese: Divine Diva. Once again longing to be a "big cheese," Louise dreams of replacing her common brown shoes, with their squeaky soles, with fancy black patent leather shoes with sparkly buckles. Unfortunately, Louise's mother insists on the usual brown shoes. To make matters worse, Louise's best friend Fern shoes up the next day with the exact shoes Louise has been longing for, precipitating a day-long quarrel between the friends...

Like its predecessor, Louise the Big Cheese and the La-di-da Shoes features a believably flawed young heroine who is nevertheless essentially goodhearted, and whose foibles will strike a chord with many young children, who will recognize something of themselves in her. The artwork by Diane Goode, done in watercolor, is cute and quite expressive, ably capturing Louise's up-and-down emotional state. The Louise the Big Cheese books remind me a bit of the Fancy Nancy series, in the sense that the heroine wants everything to be fabulous and fancy as well, although I do think that Nancy is a little bit less of a self-involved character. Recommended to anyone who read and enjoyed the first story about Louise, as well as to those looking for picture-books about friends quarreling and then making up. ( )

Genre: Modern Fantasy
Age Appropriateness: Primary
Media:Watercolor
Review/Critique:
Louise wanted a new shiny pair of black La-Di-Da shoes, but instead her mom bought her squeaky, brown, ugly shoes. Louise had told her best friend Fern about the La-Di-Da shoes, but once Louise wasn't able to get them, she knew it would be okay because Fern didn't have them either. When Louise saw Fern, however, she found out that Fern did have the La-Di-Da shoes. All day Fern and Louise fought about the shoes, until they tried to go home, but Fern's feet were so sore that she couldn't. Louise let Fern wear her brown shoes and Louise wore the La-Di-Da shoes home, and after, they came to the conclusion that the La-Di-Da shoes were not all that.

This is good Modern Fantasy because little girls like to pick out their own shoes and they get jealous and fight. The story is very realistic, and many aspects of the story could happen in real life, the only thing is that, in reality, Louise's dog wouldn't talk.

I liked the final message of the story, but, I thought the meat of the story was lacking. The argument between Fern and Louise was too drawn out, the relationship between Louise and her sister was confusing. It took too muh work to get to the "moral" of the story. ( )