I am using a five-year old MacBook [late 2009] currently running Snow Leopard v 10.6.8.

I have 114.60 GB available on the MacBook , model identifier 5.1. Build 10K549
Disk Utility found no problems.
I have current back ups via Carbon Copy Cloner to
an external HD.

Yesterday, I bought a MacBook Pro Retina 13 inch.

For the past ten days I have read as much as I could about transferring data to the new MacBook Pro, but am getting conflicting information as to whether or not I can go directly from Snow Leopard to Maverick, or if I must first up date through Lion and Mountain Lion.

Ideally I would like for Maverick on the MacBook Pro to just suck up what it can from 10.6.8 on the MacBook, so I can keep Snow Leopard on the MacBook with software that cannot be transferred to the MacBook Pro, but is that is doable or advisable.

Sorry about so many questions, having originally started with a desktop mac running OS8. and with much help from the sadly missed MacFixit, I now cannot believe how much I have forgotten - so any advice you can offer will be gratefully received.
Kate