At Aunt Frieda's house for dinner, McDuff the dog and the old cat Purlina have a tussle over a Turkey Tidbit.

When Yoko's class puts on a play about taking care of teeth, several students are not happy with their parts.

Despite the doubts of some classmates and her native-born Japanese mother's inability to read English, Yoko finds the key to reading and catches up with the other students in putting new leaves on the classroom's book tree.

Kindergartner Yoko not only learns to write her letters and numbers in English, she shows her teacher and fellow students how to write their names using Japanese calligraphy.