What is the main conflict in the book "How to Eat Fried Worms"?
Quite simply, the "problem" in How to Eat Fried Worms is the challenge for Billy to eat 15 worms in 15 days. In this way, the conflict can be seen as Billy vs. friends (and sometimes even Billy vs. parents).
Early in the plot, Billy and his friends (Alan and Tom) agree on a bet. Billy instigates the bet by saying that he can pretty much eat a couple bites of anything, even if he doesn't like it. It is Tom who actually suggests fifteen worms in fifteen days for fifty dollars. The first issue arises with how big the worms have to be in order to be eaten.
The bigger and juicier, the better!
The boys agree that the worms must be supplied by the opponents (and not by Billy). Billy uses an extraordinary array of condiments to help him stomach the worms, such as ketchup and horseradish. Unfortunately...
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for Billy, his tummy gets quite upset. The continual ups and downs of Billy's stomach create suspense for the reader as we wonder whether Billy will be able to win the bet. Luckily, his parents and his doctor help him through the struggle and he eventually wins the bet!
What trouble did the characters encounter in "How to Eat Fried Worms"?
Billy and his friends, like most boys their age, get in trouble regularly for a number of different reasons, most of them minor. In the events leading up to the bet in the first chapter, Tom, Joe, and some others are apparently stealing peaches from a neighbor's tree, and Joe is caught. The boys have to return the peaches, and the neighbor calls their mothers. Then, Tom won't eat his dinner, so his mother doesn't let him go out to play.
When the boys first make their bet, their parents seem to look upon it as harmless behavior, and generally leave them alone. In Chapters 27 and 28 however, when Alan and Joe try to cheat on the bet by tricking Billy and forcing him to announce with a siren before midnight that he has remembered to eat his daily worms with minutes to spare, their parents get upset and make them apologize to the neighbors for waking them up. All four boys get reprimanded for fighting in Chapter 30, and in Chapter 37 Joe gets in trouble for planning to put Billy in the cistern, the one episode of mischief which could have had potentially serious consequences.