The Family Who Lived in a Boot

A huge leather boot sits in a green valley, with hills behind, and a whole family lives inside it. Its toe holds a round upstairs den, where a mother and two children read letters on sofas beneath a patchwork quilt, with hanging birds and lanterns above. Beside it, in the boot shaft, a grandfather in a high-backed chair tells a boy a story in front of a painting of a winding mountain road, among teddy bears and moons. Downstairs in the sole, an astronomy room has a stargazer with two brass telescopes and a child reading at a round star-chart table, under paper moons and stars. At the heel, a kitchen has a woman in an apron chopping mushrooms, a toddler by a copper pot stove and pans hanging on the wall. The laces, stitches and curved walls frame the rooms, and every colour block makes an easy edge.