Copper-Toed Boots

Paperbacks are $13.99 until January 1, then the price is changing to $15.99. The hardcover is $24.99 here now and $26.99 elsewhere.

Paperbacks are 6 x 9 inches, hardcovers are 7.5 x 10 inches, both in color. 

Ever since she was a little girl, Marguerite de Angeli loved her father's descriptions of the red leather-topped copper-toed boots he prized when he was a young boy in Lapeer, Michigan. She also treasured his tales of tradin' at the store and with his schoolmates, of a mischievous episode with a calf in the school house belfry, of carrying water for the elephants on circus day, of picnicking during blackberry time—the quaint happenings of a small American town during the 1870s.

And finally—almost as though the copper-toed boots had led the way—the story of Shad, his best friend Ash Tomlinson, the little dog Sammy, and their good times and mishaps through a Michigan summer just had to be written so that girls and boys of today could share in it with them.

Partly because Lapeer and its people are part of her own background, and partly because of her sure instinct for absorbing and recreating the feeling of family and community life, past or present, Marguerite de Angeli gave us in Copper-Toed Boots one of her most lovely and realistic American picture books.