Penrod Schofield is an eleven-year-old boy living in middle America. He's been roped into the school play as the young Sir Lancelot, a role that he does not want to play. Instead of slogging through it, he and his friends make mischief and thus are dubbed the "bad boys." They lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. When Penrod's sister's dress is found muddied in the doghouse, he naturally is blamed for it. Penrod comes into situations that are too complicated for his young mind to understand, and yet, he manages to somehow make sense of it all. He learns, despite himself, what it means to be human.

Booth Tarkington's novels The Two Vanrevels and Mary's Neck appeared on the bestseller list nine times, making him one of the most popular writers of his time. Today, he is known for writing The Magnificent Ambersons (which won him the Pulitzer Prize), a piece of work that Orson Welles made into a film. Booth also won another Pulitzer for writing Alice Adams, a novel has been compared favorably to Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.