ARLY is a chapter book which is about a poor boy who lives with his father in Florida and they are under strict living quarters. His life as a “picker’s son” consists of no education and nothing to do during the day, until his life changed when the famous person arrived by boat to their small town. Little did he know, this famous person would be a schoolteacher and she would be the one to get him excited about reading and writing. Through obstacles, Arly Poole is finally granted the opportunity to leave that small town, and go to school in a real city somewhere else in Florida. Although this story doesn’t have pictures, it is easy for a child to break down their reading into chapters, and this book does it well because the chapters aren’t very long, four or five pages at most. One tough part about this book is the language, because the book was narrated by a boy who was uneducated and the author wanted to get that point across to the readers about how he was uneducated boy living his life, therefore it might be hard for younger readers to understand what is going on by the way the book is written. Although this book is more geared toward late elementary children, they can definitely pick up on some lessons in this book. For instance, thankfulness, which the book ends talking about. The feeling someone gets when their hopes are granted, by being able to go somewhere and learn more about school, just like Arly, this is something to be thankful for. Arly was so thankful for all the people which were put in his life, he didn’t know how to say thank you, except by doing what they thought was right for him. One more lesson to take away from this story is to stay in school. Children are dropping out of school these days, but in all reality, school is very important and the readers can see that by how the story was narrated, through an uneducated child. Very interesting book to read. ( )