This first book in the series introduces the four Hatford boy characters, Jake, Josh, Wally, and Peter --- and the three Malloy girls, Eddie, Beth, and Caroline. Jake and Josh are twins, and they're in the sixth grade with Eddie (who is really Edith Ann, but she refuses to be called that). Beth is in fifth grade, Wally and Caroline are in fourth grade, and Peter is in second grade. These are seven kids you will really enjoy getting to know.

This book also introduces "the feud", which goes back even further than that famous feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. This is a feud of boys against girls, and it begins when the four Hatford boys lose their very best friends, the Bensons, who move from West Virginia to Georgia for a year. As you might have guessed, the three Malloy girls move into the Benson house across the river from the Hatfords and that's when the fireworks begins. Girls! How can they lose their best friends to a bunch of females? It's plain that they have to make the girls so miserable that the Malloy family will move back to Ohio. Then, if nobody is renting their house anymore, the Benson boys will have to come back, won't they? From the boys viewpoint it's certainly worth a try.

First thing, the boys dump all kinds of dead stuff on the girls' side of the river --- dead birds, roadkill, dead fish. Really icky stuff. But these three girls are more than a match for the boys. Do the boys like dead stuff? Then the girls will give them dead stuff! Eddie and Beth decide to pretend they are burying Caroline in the river.

Through their dad's binoculars, the boys watch those two girls carry their little sister down to the river in a blanket, crying, and dump her into the water. The boys can't believe their own eyes! Dumping dead fish is one thing --- but people? Nobody just dumps people into a river, do they? And how did Caroline die? Was it all the dead stuff polluting the water? Will the boys go to jail for killing her? They are plenty scared.

The pranks and hijinks continue throughout the book, back and forth, and the boys finally realize that they have started an all-out war with some formidable opponents. But nobody is willing to call it off, which leads to even more fun in the series books that follow.

   --- Reviewed by Tamara Penny