Twelve-year-old Carl is fed up with his father's single-minded pursuit of an off-the-grid existence. His dad may be brilliant, but dumpster-diving for food, scouring through trash for salvageable junk, and wearing clothes fully sourced from garage sales is getting old. Increasingly worried by what schoolmates and a certain girl at his new school might think of his circumstances — and encouraged by his off-kilter best friend — Carl adopts the principles set forth in a puppy-training pamphlet to “retrain” his dad’s mindset...a crackpot experiment that produces some very unintentional results. This is a fierce and funny novel about family and untangling some of the ties that bind from middle-grade master Gary Paulsen.