Part of Series
It’s spring break and the only assignment Wally Hatford and Caroline Malloy have is to do something that they have never done before. Wally’s sure that will be a cinch once he hears the great news about the mighty Benson brothers coming to stay for vacation. It will be nonstop action all the way. For starters, the nine Benson and Hatford boys plan on scaring the three Malloy sisters silly by convincing them that their house is haunted. Of course, the boys don’t know that the girls are hard at work plotting their own special surprise welcome. The Bensons don’t know what they’re up against with the Malloy girls. But they soon will. Meanwhile, everyone in town knows there’s a hungry cougar on the prowl. When the kids decide to take a break from their tricks and join forces in catching the cougar, guess who gets stuck with the scariest job? This will surely be something no one has ever done before. From the Hardcover edition.
Author
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in Anderson, Indiana, US on January 4, 1933. Her family were strongly religious with conservative, midwestern values and most of her childhood was spent moving a lot due to her father's occupation as a salesman. Though she grew up during the Depression and her family did not have a lot of money, Naylor stated that she never felt poor because her family owned good books. Her parents enjoyed reading stories to the children—her father would imitate the characters in Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer—and her mother read to them every evening, "almost until we were old enough to go out on dates, though we never would have admitted this to anyone." By the time Phyllis reached fifth grade, writing books was her favorite hobby and she would rush home from school each day to write down whatever plot had been forming in her head - at sixteen her first story was published in a local church magazine. Phyllis has written over 80 books for children and young people. One of these books, "Shiloh," was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1992, was named a Notable Children's Book by the American Library Association and was also Young Adult Choice by the International Reading Association. Naylor gets her ideas from things that happen to her or from things she has read. "Shiloh" was inspired by a little abused dog she and her husband found. The little dog haunted her so much that she had to write a story about him to get it out of her mind.
