An empowering picture book set in the 1940s about a determined five-year-old girl who embarks on a journey to deliver milk to her neighbors in the holler.

Every morning, Ernestine shouts out her window to the Great Smoky Mountains, "I'm five years old and a big girl!" When Mama asks Ernestine--who helps with chores around the farm while Papa is away at war--to carry two mason jars filled with milk to their neighbor, Ernestine isn't sure she can do it. After all, she'd need to walk through thickets of crabapple and blackberry by the creek, not to mention past vines of climbing bittersweet. But Ernestine is five years old and a big girl, so off she sets. Along the way, one mason jar slips from her arms and rolls down the mountainside into the river, and Ernestine is sure it's lost forever . . . until her neighbor's son shows up with a muddy jar--and there's a surprise inside! With tons of flavor and a can-do spirit, here is a celebration of American history and a plucky girl who knows that helping a family in need is worth the trouble. “It seems like the recipe for Ernestine’s Milky Way is to fill a mason jar with the words of Kerry Madden-Lunsford and the pictures of Emily Sutton, add a spoonful of Barbara Cooney, William Steig, and Virginia Lee Burton, then shake it up into this fresh concoction of classic storytelling and energetic art. This book reads like butter.” – Marla Frazee, two-time Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator


"This delicious period story with its warmly inviting illustrations has some surprises that get us right into the heart of the story. And what a good heart it is!” -Jane Yolen, author of Owl Moon, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight, and A Bear Sat On My Porch Today.