While her teacher Miss Splinter is lecturing her second-grade class about the exotic animals, clowns, and other performers they are watching at the circus, Emeline accidentally becomes part of the show.
Purports to be the journal of a cat recounting all nine of the lives she has lived and her remarkable effect on history, beginning in Mesopotamia in 3000 B.C. and culminating in Wisconsin in 1995.
A young baker sets off on a journey across the United States to gather all the things she will need to bake a cherry pie, including coal for the oven, cherries for the pie, and glass for the measuring cup.