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.
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..
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.
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
