Peters Joint Junior Fiction Book of the Year, The Wrong Shoes: Q&A with Tom Percival

June 11th 2025

Our Peters Children's Book of the Year 2025 interview series continues! We're excited to have Tom Percival, author of The Wrong Shoes, on the blog to discuss his award-winning junior fiction title. Highly relatable to many children in the UK, The Wrong Shoes is a sensitively drawn story about resilience and making the right choices, and is a must-have read for every empathy collection.

Read on to find out the positive impact art had on Tom's own life, the importance of main characters like Will, and his ideas for engaging young people with reading.

Tom Percival | Author Tom Percival is an author/illustrator who lives in Stroud with his family and The Best Dog in the World (apologies if you happen to think that your dog is The Best Dog in the World). A lot of his books explore social connections, community, equality and emotional growth, but he also makes room to write a bit of pure escapist fun once in a while. When he's not making books he enjoys walking and running around the countryside with either his family, or The Best Dog in the World, and sometimes ALL of them at once. He also makes music and enjoys taking photographs.  DISCOVER BOOKS BY TOM PERCIVAL

Congratulations on The Wrong Shoes being voted as joint Peters Junior Fiction Book of the Year! How does it feel to be chosen by teachers, school librarians and public librarians from across the UK?

Thank you! And it felt AMAZING! I feel like my picture book work receives a huge amount of support from teachers and librarians and I don’t think I would have a quarter of the career that I currently do have if it wasn’t for them.

But of course, a novel is very different to a picture book, and being as it was my first, I was quite nervous about how it would be received, so it was HUGELY gratifying to find out that The Wrong Shoes was chosen as a joint winner! I feel incredibly proud of the award and really pleased to know that Will’s story resonated with so many people.

The protagonist Will finds a way to express his vulnerabilities and grow through art. Why was it important for you to portray the impact art can have on a child’s life?

Because of the impact that art had on me! It’s no exaggeration to say that were it not for my secondary school art teacher Mr Parker (who Mr Prince is inspired by) my life and career would have been very different. He gave me constant support, encouragement and just enough carefully worded reasons why I couldn’t just ALWAYS draw Dragonlance characters and Space Marines if I wanted to get a good grade in GCSE art. But more than that, he made me feel that this was something that I was good at and could explore as a career.

I wasn’t in exactly the same situation as Will, but life was very challenging when I was younger and knowing that I had a skill that lined up with my passion and that I could do something that other people appreciated was an incredible boost to my shaky self-confidence.

The illustrations in The Wrong Shoes are equally as evocative as the written story. What were your initial reasons for including illustrations in The Wrong Shoes?

I just wanted the whole experience of reading the book to be as rich as possible, and including illustrations felt like a great way to do that. Also, if you include illustrations then you don’t need to include so many physical descriptions in the text as the pictures can do some of the heavy lifting. But basically, I just wanted the whole package to feel as special as possible.

Illustrations by Tom Percival, from The Wrong Shoes

The Wrong Shoes has given young children a protagonist that they can relate to, in his experience at school and his family’s financial hardship. Why is it important for children to read books which include protagonists like Will?

Without wanting to sound too negative here, I think it’s because life can be really hard sometimes and any one of us can suddenly find ourselves in situations where life becomes challenging, and being able to cope in that situation is ESSENTIAL. So, regardless of whether a child has experience of how it feels to struggle like Will does, they are going to experience struggle in some way at some point and I wanted to present how Will copes with HIS struggle and how he refuses to give up.

So, yes, while The Wrong Shoes specifically explores financial insecurity and the effect that this has on a child, at its core it’s a book about the importance of hope and trying to make the right choices.

Our award focuses on books which excite and engage children on their reading journey. What do you think we adults – as leaders and carers – can do to encourage children to read for pleasure?

It’s a tough question. Whilst the benefits of reading for pleasure are of course statistically proven to be hugely important, making it actually happen is another matter entirely.

My feeling is that we need a multi-pronged approach to do this. To my mind that might include gamification in some way, so potentially a reward system to encourage continued readership. The National Literacy Trust have run a scheme in the past called Premier League Reading Stars where children could access video clips from their favourite footballers upon completing various reading challenges, and I feel that sort of role model example setting can be very powerful if it’s done well.

I think that the main question to consider is what children are now doing that ISN’T reading and to try to consider what it is that they ‘get’ from that activity and then try to work out how to deliver that through reading.

It’s crucial that we present a whole range of books that differ in tone/genre/style/form so that ALL children can find books that will engage THEM regardless of their mood at any given time.

Finally, I think modelling is key, so if you want the children around you to read, make sure that you are visibly reading yourself.

What are you working on at the moment? (and when can we read or see it!)

LOTS! I’m currently writing two picture books and illustrating another one. I’ve just finished illustrating a thoughtful picture book called The Wonder and a funny, early middle-grade book called Invasion of the Doggy Snatchers, which is the second Squirrel and Duck book and comes out in August. 

I would LOVE to write a follow up to The Wrong Shoes, and I do have an idea for it, but I haven’t actually started tapping away at the story yet—so we’ll see if that idea comes to life! I hope it will though… Still, even if it doesn’t, I want to write more books in that area and have lots of ideas bubbling away!

The Wrong Shoes Will has the wrong shoes - he's always known it but doesn't know how to change it. Navigating the difficulties of home and school when you feel you stick out is tough, but finding confidence with the help and empathy of friends can be all you need to see the way. You pay £5.91           RRP £7.99 Save 26% DISCOVER

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