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.