To mark World Refugee Week 2025 and its theme Finding Freedom: Diversity in Community, we’re honoured to share a deeply moving conversation with author Coral Vass, whose acclaimed picture book Grandma’s Treasured Shoes continues to resonate with readers across generations.

Inspired by a single image of worn shoes belonging to refugees, Coral’s story gently guides young readers through a powerful journey of displacement, courage, and hope. In this blog, Coral reflects on the symbolism of shoes as a storytelling device, the collaboration with illustrator Christina Huynh, and the lasting impact the book has had in classrooms and communities since its release.

With heartfelt insight, Coral invites us to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” and to see beyond the headlines, connecting children and adults alike to the lived experiences of refugees with empathy, understanding, and respect.

Grandma’s Treasured Shoes is such a tender and powerful story. What inspired you to tell a refugee story through the lens of something as everyday — and symbolic — as a pair of shoes.

Years ago, I was reading a magazine at the hairdressers and I came across an article about refugees. There was a photograph accompanying the article – it was a montage of shoes all belonging to different refugees. I was so fascinated by this photograph that I went out and purchased the magazine. The article was about a group of refugees having to flee their home country due to war, in order to find a safe place to live. And as I looked at the picture of the different shoes, I thought to myself, each shoe represents a person, each shoe has been on a journey and each shoe has a story to tell. I then was reminded of the old adage- ‘walk a mile in someone’s shoes’, and I had the idea of using actual shoes as a motif to convey a refugee’s life story and how the shoes lead them to a new life in Australia. On doing lots of research, I decided to focus my story on the migration of Vietnamese refugees; the largest number of refugees ever to come to Australia.

I’m sure many refugees lost their shoes on the journey or left their shoes behind on the boat at the point of rescue. However, as I tried to ‘put myself in their shoes’, I could only imagine that the ‘shoes that brought them’ freedom, would have become one of the most treasured pair of shoes ever owned.

The journey of Grandma’s shoes moves through moments of fear, hope, and freedom. How did you approach writing about displacement and trauma in a way that was accessible and meaningful for young children?

It is very difficult for anyone, let alone children, to comprehend what it is like to flee your home, your country, your family and leave behind your belongings in a war-torn country and escape for your life. Added to this challenging situation is the issue of settling into a completely foreign country, with a new language, new landscape and new people. I wanted to make this book accessible to children, so I tried to do this by conveying deep feeling with the use of an inanimate object - the shoes: ‘They were fearful shoes, racing shoes, chasing shoes, escaping shoes. Trembling shoes, teary shoes, roaming shoes and weary shoes...’

I also wanted to make this book accessible to children by personalising the ‘Grandma’ in Grandma’s Treasured Shoes. It was my intent to convey the fact that ‘she’ could be your grandma or my grandma. I hoped Grandma’s Treasured Shoes would offer a small window of understanding and appreciation into someone else’s very different life, for it is only as we seek to understand first, that we can truly be understood ourselves.

The 2025 World Refugee Week theme is ‘Finding Freedom: Diversity in Community’. How do you feel this theme is reflected in Grandma’s journey — and in her place within her new home?

‘Australians all let us rejoice, for we are one and free... For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share…’

These familiar words from our national anthem capture both the promise of freedom and the open-hearted generosity that has shaped our nation’s identity. Australia’s cultural fabric has been woven over generations by people from all corners of the globe. Refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants have brought with them not just their belongings, but their traditions, languages, faiths, and food, enriching our society and helping to create the vibrant, multicultural country that Australia is today. When I wrote ‘Grandma’s Treasured Shoes’, I wanted to foster empathy and understanding for the many individuals and families who have made the difficult journey across oceans in search of safety, freedom, and a better future; their stories of resilience, courage, and hope, often untold or misunderstood. One of the pages in Grandma’s Treasured Shoes reads: ‘At last, she climbed aboard a small fishing boat. They became sailing shoes, sea shoes, salty but free shoes.’

I would say this year’s World Refugee Week theme ‘Finding Freedom: Diversity in Community’ is at the heart of Grandma’s story. It highlights not only the personal quest for freedom but also the transformative power of being welcomed into a new and diverse community.

You collaborated closely with illustrator, Christina Huynh, to bring this story to life. What did that collaboration mean to you, and how did it shape your understanding of the refugee experience?

It was an absolute privilege to collaborate with Christina Huynh on this book. Given her own heritage and background, Christina was able to add a deeper authenticity to this book with her beautiful and detailed illustrations.

Christina said when she first read the draft text of ‘Grandma’s Treasured Shoes’, it hit close to home because it reminded her of the stories, she listened to growing up; stories of the pirates, stories of fear, stories of struggle in the camps but also stories of hope, stories of resilience and stories of courage. Although Christina was born in Australia, her mother and her grandparents came to Australia by boat a few years after the fall of Saigon. Christina referenced real-life objects, including the main shoe which is based off While I buried myself into extensive research, I also used my imagination. But I was totally blown away the day Christina sent me a photo of an actual child’s shoe she based her illustrations on; it was a little white sandal that was found by one of Christina’s family members back in the 1980s. As an author, we can have grand ideas and use our imagination to create stories, but to actually see that there was a shoe, a treasured shoe, which brought a young child, all the way from Vietnam to Australia to start a new life, was incredible.

I was also incredibly excited when the talented storyteller Van Luu, alongside her granddaughter Enya Lucas, narrated Grandma’s Treasured Shoes for StoryBox Hub. Their reading brought the story to life in a meaningful and powerful way. With Van Luu’s personal history and lived experience as a Vietnamese refugee, added a profound sense of authenticity to the storytelling. And Enya, sharing the narration with her grandmother, mirrored the book’s themes of family, resilience and hope.

Since its release in 2019, Grandma’s Treasured Shoes has continued to resonate with readers. What impact has the story had on you personally, and what conversations have you seen it spark in classrooms, libraries, or homes - particularly around refugee experiences and empathy?

On a personal level, my early years growing up in Bangladesh laid the foundation for my understanding of the importance of human rights. I was fortunate to grow up in a household where the dignity and worth of every individual were deeply respected and valued. As an adult, living in Indonesia and later in Japan further broadened my worldview, offering me firsthand experiences of different societies and ways of life. These experiences not only deepened my appreciation for cultural diversity but also heightened my sensitivity to the challenges faced by displaced individuals.

But it wasn’t until I began writing ‘Grandma’s Treasured Shoes’; researching, interviewing refugees and hearing their stories, that I truly developed a more empathetic understanding of the refugee experience. Over the past six years, I’ve had the privilege of sharing Grandma’s Treasured Shoes with thousands of students in schools, libraries and literary festivals throughout Australia as well as internationally. Each time I present the book, I’m continually humbled by the heartfelt responses it receives. What has been particularly rewarding is seeing how many schools, at both primary and secondary, have embraced the book as part of their English curriculum. It has been chosen not only as a text for reading and analysis, but also as a tool for fostering empathy, compassion, and cultural awareness in the classroom.

It’s powerful when a seemingly simple children’s picture book can open minds and ‘walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.’