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 says. 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 new teacher, gets 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 air-headed, air-guitar-playing neighbor the closest thing to a friend, and a judgmental older sister his relentless enemy, it's all Jack can do to stay afloat. This colorful and comical 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.â¬ý