Kenneth Watson Bryce Clyde Jenkins narrates his story from Flint, Michigan, where he lives with his parents Daniel Wood Harris and Wilona Anika Noni Rose Watson, his older brother Byron Harrison Knight (By for short), and his younger sister Joetta Skai Jackson. Kenny is a bright, bashful fourth-grader at Clark Elementary who is teased for his love of books and his lazy eye. He struggles to make friends until Rufus Fry and his younger brother relocate from Arkansas. Rufus is teased for his clothes and accent, which initially makes Kenny cautious about befriending him—especially after Rufus’s family talk about using a .22 to shoot squirrels and cook them into stew. Yet the two soon become inseparable, sharing small adventures and a growing bond that helps them navigate the rougher streets of their schoolyard life.
The boys find both danger and protection in Kenny’s older brother Byron Harrison Knight and Byron’s friend Buphead. Byron, who has been held back to a sixth grade level, spins a string of “fantastic adventures” that land him in trouble—kissing his own reflection in a car window while plowing snow, playing with matches inside the house, and running up debts with the grocery store’s credit. He even hairstylizes his hair in defiance of his parents. Yet amid the chaos, he reveals flashes of compassion, such as when he buries a pigeon he unintentionally harms, a moment that deeply unsettles him. Joetta looks up to Byron, while Kenny often scratches his head at his brother’s larger-than-life antics.
Daniel and Wilona eventually decide Byron needs a change of scenery, sending him to Birmingham, Alabama to live with Wilona’s mother, Grandma Sands LaTanya Richardson Jackson, for the summer, and possibly longer. The family packs the car—their trusty “Brown Bomber” on the long road from Flint to Birmingham—and the trip unfolds like a rough map of detours and lessons. Grandma Sands’s stern wisdom soon tames Byron a bit, and Kenny discovers that his own appetite for adventure won’t simply vanish. Before long, the adults warn the children to avoid a local swimming hole because of a dangerous whirlpool, a place Kenny mishears as “Wool Pooh” thanks to his grandmother’s thick Alabama accent. Byron seizes on this miscommunication and tells Kenny and Joetta that the Wool Pooh is Winnie the Pooh’s evil twin, an idea that stirs Kenny’s curiosity even as it unsettles him.
Despite the warnings, Kenny slips into the pool to catch a turtle, only to be dragged under by the whirlpool. In that moment, he imagines the Wool Pooh seizing his ankle and dragging him down. He battles to reach the surface, enduring three near-drownings before his sister Joetta appears in his vision as an angel, urging him upward. Byron arrives moments later and dives in to save him, and the brothers decide not to tell anyone about the incident. Kenny believes he might have seen the Wool Pooh and the angel again, but Byron insists there was nothing supernatural in the water.
Not long after, a bomb explodes at a nearby church where Joetta was attending Sunday school. Trevor-like panic floods Kenny and Byron as their parents rush to the scene; Kenny, numb and shaken, wanders toward the church’s ruins and believes the Wool Pooh is again nearby, lurking in the smoke and clutching Joetta’s torn shoe. He retrieves the shoe and returns to Grandma Sands’s house, where Joetta is waiting, unsettled by her brother’s behavior and the unsettling vision he claims to have had. Joetta insists she saw him across the street waving, but she doesn’t know how he could be wearing different clothes later that day. The family eventually returns to Flint, and Kenny retreats into himself for weeks, avoiding friends and spending long hours behind the sofa.
Byron finally coaxes Kenny out for a heart-to-heart, and the younger boy’s emotions spill out in a flood of tears. Byron reassures him that the stories aren’t real and that the only way to endure was to “keep on stepping” through life, even when the world isn’t perfect. The hard-won lesson settles in as Kenny begins to understand that resilience comes from facing fear, leaning on family, and continuing onward despite the pain.
