Twelve-year-old Arie Mae lives in the North Carolina mountains with her brothers and sisters, but what she longs for is a true, shining friend, someone with whom she can share her stories. So she begins writing to her cousin Caroline in Raleigh, whom she has never met. When two ladies begin a settlement school to teach the residents some important life skills, their reception is mixed, even within Arie Mae's own family after all, they are content with their lives. Then some families from Baltimore come to be a part of the school, and Arie Mae finds who might be her true, shining friend in Tom, who walks with a limp but loves to explore. Told as a series of letters to the never-answering Caroline, Arie Mae's engaging, humorous, and insightful voice comes through beautifully. Appalachian life in the 1920s is poignantly conjured on the page, rich folklore is interspersed with everyday life, and the resolution is touching but not pat. Dowell's novel compares favorably with Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Faith, Hope, and Ivy June (2009) as a, well, shining example of historical fiction.--Moore, Melissa Copyright 2014 Booklist

Gr 5-7-All 12-year-old Arie Mae Sparks wants is one true friend. Life in the hill country of North Carolina in the 1920s is hard. Money is tight; education, food, and clothing are all limited; and folks are pretty isolated. She begins to reach out by writing letters to a cousin she's never met who lives far away in Baltimore. After her third letter goes unanswered, she's feeling pretty low, but soon after, she meets Tom, a boy who has come from the city with a group of people interested in studying mountain folk ways. While many of these summer visitors look down on Arie Mae and her kin, Tom becomes her friend. She'll do anything to keep his friendship, including finding him a bear and a ghost. Told through the letters she continues to write, this work is superbly narrated by Suzy Jackson, whose pacing, accent, and inflection are spot-on. VERDICT This is a spellbinding audio, one suitable for class listening when studying history or social studies as well as a genuinely enjoyable story.-John R. Clark, Hartland Public Library, ME (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Life in a 1920s North Carolina mountain community is warmly detailed through letters 12-year-old Arie Mae Sparks writes to a cousin shes never met.Lonely despite her loving and dependable family, Arie longs for a real friend. She sets her sights on a visitor: Tom Wells from Baltimore, whose family is visiting the nearby settlement school as a work of mercy and cultural embassy. Arie boldly offers Tom just what he needsan adventureeven as he gives Arie a sense of herself as storyteller. Dowells voice for Arie is bright, earnest and observant, and Aries mountain speech with its formal phrasing and different grammar is richly and sweetly conveyed. Dowell conveys a difficult way of life without pity. As Arie says of Harlan, the abandoned boy informally adopted by her parents, You cant help but admire a boy like that. Even when hes just snuck under the table and tied your shoelaces to the table leg. You might clobber him but you stay filled with admiration all the same. Traditional ways and new ones, well-off city folk and struggling, self-sufficient mountain people are shown in contrast, each changing the other. A passing reference to "a clutch of Indian squaws" is unfortunate.Still, Arie is a superbly appealing girl, and the details and encounters of her daily life offer a fine glimpse of a particular time and place. (Historical fiction. 8-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Twelve-year-old Arie Mae Sparks is imaginative and full of energy-qualities that often translate to "awful strange" in her small mountain town in 1920s North Carolina. With the aim of cheering up her mother and making a much-needed friend, Arie Mae begins writing letters to a cousin she's never met, the daughter of an estranged aunt. Her letters go unanswered, but in the meantime, Arie Mae meets a visiting boy named Tom. "Cousin Caroline, have you ever seen anyone who shined?" writes Arie Mae. "Well, this boy did. Even though he walked with a limp and was a little bit sideways, he was shining." The two traipse through the woods, which are supposedly haunted by "haints," but Tom's heart condition could mean the loss of Arie Mae's only friend. Arie Mae's openheartedness and yearning for connection make for a deeply poignant story, one with a richly realized setting and cast. As Arie Mae begins to see her life in a new light, Dowell (The Second Life of Abigail Walker) examines the clash between city and country life and what true wealth really means. Ages 10-12. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.