Fifth-grader Minn, the tallest girl in school, begins a rocky friendship with Jake, a new student who is not only very short, but is also afraid of the worms and lizards that Minn likes to collect.
In this story, loosely based on that of Goldilocks, Goldie, who has yet to find a friend to "love with all her heart," makes an unplanned visit to the house of some bears.
Four best friends are jealous of a neighbor girl and refuse to have anything to do with her, until they each have a dream in which a fairy godmother shows them what the girl's life is really like.
Harriet M. Welsch is up to her old spying tricks when her beloved nanny Ole Golly, who had married and moved to Montreal, returns without her husband, Harriet's friend Sport announces he has a crush on a schoolmate, and the people across the street appear to be holding a child hostage.
After she, her older brother, and their father move from Chicago to Maryland, Alice has trouble fitting into her new third grade class, but with the help of some new friends and her own unique outlook, she survives.
While driving to Auntie Dot's house, Junie tells her children about spending fifth grade there during her parent's separation many years earlier, when finding a best friend seemed almost as important as seeing her mother again.
