It has been translated into ten languages including Spanish, Catalan, Hebrew, Turkish, Czech, and German.

As a way to learn his vocabulary words, he illustrates them in the margins of a book his mom got him.

When he discovers a newspaper in the attic with the story of a girl who drowned on Martha's Vineyard, he spends his summer trying to uncover the mystery of what happened instead of completing his summer reading list.

[1] Tashjian wanted to write a book for reluctant readers with the humor and visual support of a Calvin and Hobbes book, even dedicating the novel to its creator Bill Watterson.

She incorporated the methods of several reading programs into the novels such as Lindamood Bell's ‘Visualizing and Verbalizing’ and Maryanne Wolf’s ‘Rave-O.’[2] The series has a total of 10 books.