Tennis Shoe Love
Musician Joe Shannon creates Valentine’s Day book about first love

Appalachian Musician and songwriter Joe Shannon’s Tennis Shoe Love will enchant young readers who will identify with the jumbled feelings ranging from pleasure to fear experienced by first love. Older generations will remember with fondness the inadequacies they felt as they explored falling in love for the first time.

What better holiday than Valentine’s Day to conjure up romantic feelings from the past? Tennis Shoe Love is the perfect coffee table book to set out along with the candy hearts. The illustrations by Suzie Huskins are as endearing as the story itself.

The idea for Tennis Shoe Love came to Shannon about twelve years ago while he was working as a touring artist in North Carolina schools.   After telling some Jack Tales, Shannon was asked by a young student to recite a Valentine’s story.   Not knowing a children’s story specifically about Valentine’s Day, Shannon decided to call upon his memory and imagination to create such a tale.  He recalled that he did write “I love you” on the end of his tennis shoe in the 4th grade, thinking that a love note on his tennis shoe would be more memorable than a little red card.  Building on this “actual experience,” he created a series of fictional, embarrassing incidents the love-struck boy had to navigate: first his friends find out, next the teacher asks him to explain his actions, and on a spelling test the boy spells “S-U-E” when he is supposed to spell Valentine.  As the boy’s embarrassment grows, he decides to give up on love and to “erase that silly note” on his shoe.  He soon discovers, however, that Sue had written him a love note, too.  Realizing that he has a girlfriend, the slightly panicked boy then wonders, “Is there something more to love than a note on a shoe?”     

Joe Shannon is well-known to residents and tourists of the High Country. He founded Mountainhome Music which showcases local and North Carolina regional musicians.   He has two CDs, Warmlight and A Full Moon on Freshly Fallen Snow, and he wrote a Civil War era play, Blue Ridge Blue & Gray, about the Civil War in western North Carolina, which has been performed numerous times throughout the High Country. His latest creation My Old Gray Coat is a collection of Shannon’s stories, poems, and essays that he has read on his Mountainhome Music concerts.  Themes range from the serious to the silly: from an essay on freedom to memories of a first kiss, from a critique of teacher education to the joys of teaching, from Civil War letters to the memories of Christmas Candy. 

An exceptionally creative person with a flair for the romantic, you can meet Joe Shannon on February 14th Valentine’s day. Shannon will be signing his books and cd’s, during the Volunteer Expo at the Boone Mall in Center Court from 11am to 3pm. Tennis Shoe Love is available at local bookstores and online stores. ISBN: 9781933251400, retail $14.95. For more information about Joe Shannon or his books call (828) 265-3993.