Newbery Award-winning author Betsy Byars's heartwarming and timeless books about the irrepressible Blossom family are back. In this introduction to the one-of-a-kind clan, Pap, the Blossoms' grandfather, has landed himself in jail for disturbing the peace. Even though Junior is laid up in the hospital with two broken legs after jumping off the barn roof to test his new homemade wings, he and his sister and brother, Maggie and Vern, have come up with...

Junior Blossom is inventing again, but this time no one cares enough to ask about the secret his "KEEP OUT" signs conceal. A remark of his mother's brings Junior's world crashing down, as she tells his sister Maggie how proud her father would have been of her. Junior's grief makes him the focus of everyone's concern, and getting his newest invention, a flying saucer, off the ground becomes a family project.

Convinced that Mud is responsible for the disappearance of the school hamster that was his responsibility for the weekend, Junior Blossom is determined that the dog should be tried for his "crime."