Incident at Hawk's Hill by Allan W Eckert

There is a little boy who is six years old but is small for his age. He felt alone in this world and the only friends he felt he had were the animals. He lived on a farm and he loved to follow the animals around. One day, he followed a chicken out of the farm land and he technically ran away. His father sent out a search party to find him. Ben would hide away from anyone he saw. Finally, John saw movement in a badger hole and he decided to wait until something came back out. He finally saw Ben who started snarling like a badger and attacking John. John calmed Ban down and took him home. Everyone was excited to see him and they had a home coming party. Mr. MacDonald threatened to kill George Burton if he didn’t pack up and leave the country in three days.

The Pigman by Paul Zindel

This book is about a girl who is not very pretty who had a friend named John and they do weird things together. John smokes cigarettes, drinks beer, and disobeys his parents. Lorraine listens to her mom, sometimes lies to her mom, and always hangs out with John. One day, Lorraine was dared to make a prank call and she was caught up so then the next day, John and Lorraine had to collect ten dollars from an old man. He was supposed to pay the L&J Fund, a phony group. John and Lorraine felt bad about it and offered to take the old man to the zoo