Good story, Appalachian setting. ( )

Sentimental look at what it took to build the only national park in the U.S. built on private land. ( )

Reviewed by Julie M. Prince for TeensReadToo.com

Most folks wouldn't shove sticks in the beaks of geese to keep them from eating in their gardens, but Autumn Winifred Oliver does things different. In a mountain town so tiny it only has one road leading in and out, different is something folks in Autumn's parts don't always cotton to. But sometimes it takes a special kind of thinking to make things change, which is the one thing Autumn craves more than anything. Change.

Autumn seems to have a lot in common with Gramps, who's determined to convince the thirty families in Cades Cove to sign papers that will allow a new national park to border their little town. Convinced that there's more to Gramps' idea than just collecting money from passing tourists, Autumn sets out to find the truth, only to find much more than she'd bargained for, including more approaching change than she could have imagined.

With a setting that jumps to life, debut author Kristin O'Donnell Tubb tells the story of Cades Cove through strong character voices intertwined with glorious description:

"The trees had turned into a showy blaze of orange and red and yellow bursts - miniature suns, each one. Those durn trees! They put on this spectacle every year, and I swannee they get better at it with practice."

Historical fiction can sometimes be off-putting to middle grade readers, but the author handles this one so deftly, it's not immediately obvious the book is set during the Great Depression. By the time the subject comes up, Autumn has hooked the audience and is off and running.

Adventures and folktales carry us through Autumn's story as she and her neighbors come to terms with the fact that Cades Cove is about to change forever, one way or another. Readers will appreciate the unique last rites of the small town's traditions and ways of life as they give way to modernization, progress, and change.

A one-of-a-kind, carefully crafted story with a life of its own. ( )

Autumn Winifred Oliver, an eleven-year-old girl living in Cades Cove, Eastern Tennessee, during the Depression, watches her grandfather as he tries to persuade his neighbors to back the proposed Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but when they discover that the government representative is lying to them, Gramps becomes even more resourceful. Includes author's note about the history of the park. ( )