"A new business has been formed to serve the greater Grover's Corner area—Henry Reed's Baby-Sitting Service. Henry Reed, a dependable, resourceful, competent young man will take excellent care of your children weekdays and Saturdays during daylight hours, or evenings until midnight.

Don't trust the children you love to just anyone. They deserve the best. Call Henry Reed. Satisfaction guaranteed."

This is the mimeographed announcement that starts Henry Reed and his good friend and business associate Midge Glass on an entirely new career.

As readers of earlier Henry Reed books already know, Henry is a free-wheeling, enterprising young man who records his multifarious activities in diary form. This account of Henry's baby-sitting summer begins with his first frantic encounter with a dear four-year-old monster named Danny (Henry's battle wounds include a bump on the head, two skinned knees, and a queasy stomach), picks up steam as Henry becomes more and more involved, and ends with what is undoubtedly the only recorded case of peacock-sitting in history.

Keith Robertson and Robert McCloskey, who might have known or been Herny Reed at one point of their lives, write about and picture him in a way that is both dead-pan serious and riotously funny.

From the dust jacket