Fourth graders on a three-day camping trip with their teachers experience frights and delights.

With a friend like Patrick, who needs enemies? Patrick is a showoff and a prankster, and Richard is his usual target. Resolved not to let Patrick get him in trouble, Richard is sucked in by The Mosquito, a way to eat red Jell-O through a straw, and of course trouble ensues. Complications arise when the new girl from France thinks the boys are seriously injured, and miscommunication is all too easy when idioms in English and in French are taken literally....

The boys and girls in the fourth grade devise a contest to "sink" their substitute teacher by making her cry.

Seven-year-old Richard is self-conscious when he receives a pair of purple pants from his aunt and uncle and has to wear them to school, but he is even more worried when his uncle shows up for a visit to his classroom.