Everyone in second grade seems set on breaking a world record and friends Ivy and Bean are no exception, deciding to become the youngest people ever to discover a dinosaur skeleton.

When Bean's parents leave her in the care of her older sister Nancy for the afternoon, she enlists her neighbor and best friend Ivy to come over and teach Nancy how to be a really good babysitter.

It's the Science Fair, and the second grade is all over it! Some kids are making man-eating robots. Some kids are holding their breath for a very, very long time. Some kids are doing interesting things with vacuum cleaners. The theme, obviously, is global warming. But what should Ivy and Bean do? Something involving explosions? Or ropes? Something with ice cubes? Or maybe...maybe something different.

Ivy and Bean try to make money by writing a newspaper about Pancake Court, but the neighbors are not pleased to read about themselves.

Have your jewels gone missing? Is a cloaked stranger hiding in the shadows? Bean, Private Investigator, and her assistant, Ivy, are ready to solve any mystery you can throw at them. What's that you say? You have no mysteries? That's what the kids of Pancake Court thought, too, until Ivy and Bean showed them the mystery that lurked at the very heart of their neighborhood, the secret, unseen, hidden -- wait a second! Bean, P. I., says if you want to...