Boots?

Boots for youngsters is a real issue, especially for the smaller kids. My 9 year old daughter is 48" tall, and weighs 50 pounds, and can easily hike 20km/day in snow, but only if you give her time, and it is much much slower in boots. We can safely average 3km/hr without hurrying too much, but not in the boots most place try and sell you. They must be for ATVers or something. I use the 20km/day for up to 4" of snow on a trail as a guideline. That's about 7 hours of travel and 1 hour of lunch for a 48" kid. If they want to do 10km and play for 3 hours that would be fine also. I just want to indicate how unencumbered they should be. I can't give you a canned solution here, 'cause their aint one. Last trip she wore here sneakers and was fine, but what kids really need is a lightweight mukluk or ankle moccasin, and they are really hard to find in smaller sizes, and hard enough in adult sizes also but not so critical. It's when they scale down adult stuff into kids sizes without really giving a thought to function that really bugs the crap out of me.

By age twelve, it is less of an issue but most kids boots are still wrong.
Most sneakers and trail runners hold too much water in non-drying conditions.

So here is another diy project...
http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/mocinstr.htm
Make the ankles high, and leave room for felt insoles and thick wool socks.