~The first book in the award-winning Belden Boy Series, is told from the perspective of Peter McDugal....
 
You may know what it feels like to be around a bully every day. You don’t understand why the bully is saying or doing things to hurt you or your friends. But it gives you knots in your stomach to be sure! But did you know that bullying happened over a hundred years ago too?  Same story, same pranks, but a different time!
 
Meet Peter McDugal. His adventures in the 1890s, in and around a one-room rock school, tucked in the hill and valleys near the Mississippi River, was adventurous. Belden School was more than just a school, it was a friend to Peter and his community through good times and bad. Find out what makes Belden so special and Peter’s life so adventurous!
 
2012 CSAA Award Winner 
2013 The Eric Hoffer Award Finalist 
 
Driven by the love of teaching children and the pure enjoyment of creating characters that can come alive in a child’s imagination, P.J. HarteNaus created the award-winning four book series, Belden Boy. 
 
P.J. was asked to help save an 1859 one-room school that was boarded up on the hiking trail in 2003. As part of a Master’s program, P.J. was given two Belden School journals from the 1800s by a local farmer who saved them from being lost forever, along with anecdotal conversations with the elderly students who attended the school before its closing in 1943.   The Adventures of Peter McDugal, an introduction to a special story and school, was born from the end of this journey....and the rest is history!