Mona Newton is the depressed teenage member of a family of ex-vaudeville performers, now settled in the small town of Pineapple. Unusually intelligent and financially shrewd, Mona is sensitive to what she believes is the townspeople's critical opinion of her family's bumbling incompetence and flamboyant self-promotion. Mona rejects her father, Newt Newton, an unsuccessful used-car dealer, and her tap-dancing, pageant-arranging mother, Sister Figg Newton, and is comfortable only with the town librarian and, especially, her Uncle Florence Italy Figg, a rare book dealer.

Mona bullies her Uncle Flo into carrying out an innocent deception on the town bookseller, Ebenezer Bargain. On the first day of the month, Ebenezer puts his new books on his shelves and moves a few more volumes up to the very top shelf—higher than Mona and her tiny uncle can reach. These are the special books he intends to save as investments...