As his family sets sail on a new life by moving to Cape Hatteras, fourth-grader Jack Henry is struggling to chart a course between his parents' contradictory advice on making friends and influencing people. Just tell people what they want to hear, Dad advises. Just tell the truth, Mom cautions. Jack finds there are no easy answers as he drifts through his crazy school year. He falls desperately in love with his young teacher, getting suckered into becoming a bad-behavior spy for the principal, and is forced to make a presentable pet out of a duck with backward feet. Indeed, with an airheaded, air-guitar-playing neighbor the closest thing to a friend, and a judgmental older sister his relentless enemy, it's all he can do to stay afloat.

This colorful and comic new collection of interrelated stories featuring the author's hapless alter ego is a prequel to the four other books in the Jack Henry series, praised by Booklist for their "hilarious, exquisitely painful, and utterly on-target depiction of the life of an adolescent and preadolescent boy."

Recommendations
Booklist, American Library Association
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Horn Book
Kirkus Reviews
Publishers Weekly
School Library Journal
VOYA

Reviews
"A fun and refreshing read." --School Library Journal

" . . . Wonderful writing, which is witty, smart, and unafraid to tackle tough topics. A worthy addition to the series." --Booklist

"Jack's weird predicaments [are] both familiar and fantastic." --The Horn Book

"Mining his own childhood experiences, Gantos creates laugh-out-loud scenes."
--Kirkus Reviews

***
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Black-and-white pictures
2003
ISBN: 0-374-39987-5

Also available in paperback:
Published by Sunburst Paperback
2005
ISBN: 0-374-43718-1