It was all so unfair. Josh hadn't wanted to move with his mother to Vermont. Now, on top of a new stepfather and new baby brother, Josh is faced with a new school, and worse: a menacing bully.

Then Josh stumbles upon a secret. Following his dog, Manch, out to a field near the woods one day, Josh overhears Manch and his other dog friends talking! Not only that, Josh discovers that Manch and his friends are also faced with a bully--a pack of bullies, in fact, who are threatening a fight. The dogs don't want Josh's help, but still Josh thinks he can solve their problems and his own with one simple solution. The only hitch to his plan: It's dangerous.

Taut and suspenseful, Katherine Paterson's exciting chapters, together with Emily Arnold McCully's pen-and-ink drawings, debuted in more than a hundred newspapers across the country as part of the Breakfast Serials program and are here published for the first time as a book.