A father tells his son a story about when he was young. He found a duck in the fridge and then all over the house. He invited in sheep to get the ducks and then dogs to get the sheep and so on. None of them left, so he came up with a way to make everyone go to sleep, reading a bedtime story.

Mr. Monkey is invited to visit a school to perform a trick he just learned, but nothing goes as planned.

Using only two words--look and out--relates a story about an attention-loving gorilla, a television-loving boy, and a friendship that develops over books.

Through a series of letters to his father, a private investigator, fifth-grader PJ Clueless McGee tells of his efforts to discover who stole macaroni and cheese from the school cafeteria.