Bullying

"This is the 100 percent true story of the summer I - Wyatt Jones - was eleven and built a fort in the woods with my friend Augie Valerio. It isn't the story I handed in to my teacher about how I spent my summer vacation. See, there's stuff that happened that you can't really talk about in school. Not unless you want to get into trouble. Plus, there are things in here like dead squirrels. and squirrel guts. There are weapons, too: a slingshot, a pellet gun, and a pocketknife. I'm just warning you, in case that kind of stuff bothers you.

School has started, and Binny can't believe how terrible it is. She has a horrid hand-me-down uniform, and the kids make fun of her "posh" city accent.

Then a storm destroys the roof of Binny's house. Binny; her mother; her sensible older sister, Clem; and her rambunctious brother, James (and his chickens) are forced to move across town to a rental home at the end of a forbidding, unlit lane. Things only get worse when she calls their new landlady a "bossy old witchy woman" at school...in front of the landlady's daughter, Clare, who starts bullying Binny mercilessly.