“If only I had someplace to go besides home.  A safe place where I’d belong and nobody would call me names or beat me up or laugh at me.  No school.  No teachers.  No mean kids.  No Mrs. Clancy.  Just me, Brendan Doyle”.  (p. 13, Where I Belong)

 No one is nice to sixth-grader Brendan Doyle:  his foster mother, his teachers, his classmates, and especially the teens who bully him. He escapes in books, drawing, carving, and daydreaming. When Brendan meets an old man near his treehouse in the Virginia woods, he believes that this is the Green Man, the magical  spirit guardian of the forest. Brendan builds a treehouse and retreats into his fantasy world. With the help of another new friend, a girl named Shea with secrets of her own,  Brendan just might find a place where he belongs.   (Booktalk by the NH Great Stone Face Committee)