Life is not going well for Tessy LeClerc. She's a C student, her teacher hates her, and her parents have got to be the strangest people to set foot in Vermont. Now she's stuck with the oral report topic everyone else wants: local hero of Fort Ticonderoga and boring old dead guy, Ethan Allen. If Tessy doesn't make this oral report the greatest thing anyone's ever heard, she'll flunk the sixth grade for sure, and life as she knows it will be over. Can Tessy find a way to show that Ticonderoga isn't just a name on a pencil, or will she be doomed to sit in the back of the classroom forever?