Nancy makes the best of not dancing the lead in her ballet school's Deep Sea Dances show, but becomes jealous when her best friend gets a better role than hers.
When a rainstorm prevents Nancy and her best friend, Robert, from getting to the planetarium the night of a class field trip, she has a brilliant idea for making things better.
Nancy is delighted that the new boy in her class is from Paris and sets out to become his friend, then discovers that this Parisian is not quite as fancy as she had thought.
Nancy writes a report for school about her great-grandfather, making things up so he seems less ordinary, but when she learns that Grandpa will be there to hear her read the report aloud she realizes she was dishonest.
Nancy is determined to make the cover of her very first book report as fancy as she can, but she spends so much time on it that she has no time to write about the book.