When writer and stay-at-home dad Jacob Burns arrives at his sons' school to a chorus of battle cries, he thinks -- for one nostalgic, bittersweet second -- that he's gone back in time to the '60s. But no. There's no riot going on -- just a bunch of bored, brainy kids. One stubborn, set-in-his-ways principal. And a whole lot of very angry parents.

Jacob and his fellow comrades have been lobbying for a gifted and talented program that will offer their precocious progeny some semblance of challenge. But the principal is the worst of all possible enemies -- he's a paper pusher, a red-tape supporter...a bureaucrat. And when he's brained to death with a spelling bee trophy, Jacob starts to wonder if someone's taken this revolution thing just a little too far.