Manny /ma·ne/ n A male nanny or babysitter, known to be handsome, fabulous, and a lover of eighties music. "Be interesting." That's what the manny tells Keats Dalinger the first time he packs Keats's school lunch, but for Keats that's not always the easiest thing to do. Even though he's the only boy at home, it always feels like no one ever remembers him. His sisters are everywhere! Lulu is the smart one, India is the creative one, and Belly...well, Belly is the naked one. And the baby. School isn't much better. There, he's the shortest kid in the entire class. But now the manny is the Dalinger's new babysitter, and things are starting to look up. It seems as though the manny always knows the right thing to do. Not everyone likes the manny as much as Keats does, however. Lulu finds the manny embarrassing, and she's started to make a list of all the crazy things that he does, such as serenading the kids with "La Cucaracha" from the front yard or wearing underwear on his head or meeting the school bus with Belly, dressed as limo drivers. Keats is worried. What if Lulu's "Manny Files" makes his parents fire the manny? Who will teach him how to be interesting then?

What’s a Park Avenue working mom to do when her troubled son desperately needs a male role model and her husband is a power workaholic? If she’s like the gutsy heroine of Holly Peterson’s astute new comedy of manners among the ill-mannered elite, she does what every other woman on the block does. She hires herself a “manny.” A solid middle-class girl from Middle America, Jamie Whitfield isn’t “one of them” but she lives in “the Grid,” the wealthiest acre of real estate in Manhattan, where big money and big media collide. And she has most everything they have–a big new apartment, full-time help with her three children, as well as her very own detached Master of the Universe attorney husband. What she doesn’t have, however, is a full-time father figure for their struggling nine-year-old son, Dylan. But the rich haven’t yet encountered a problem they can’t hire someone else to solve. Enter the manny. At first the idea of paying a man to provide a role model for Dylan sounds too crazy to be true. But one look at Peter Bailey is enough to convince Jamie that the idea may not be quite so insane after all. Peter is calm, cool, competent, and so charmingly down-to-earth, he’s irresistible. And with the political sex scandal of the decade propelling her career as a news producer into overdrive, and her increasingly erratic husband locked in his study with suspicious files, Jamie is in serious need of some grounding. Peter reminds her of everything she once was, still misses, and underneath all the high-society glitz, still is. But will the new manny in her life put the ground back beneath her feet, or sweep her off them?

Cue the pretend drum-roll: Keats's parents have a big surprise. No, they're not having a new baby. It's—wait for it, wait for it—a family road trip! Okay, so this is not exactly the birthday present Keats had in mind (no iPod?!), but when Dad parks a rented RV in the Dalinger's driveway, Keats piles in with the rest of his family—and the manny, of course—bound for the open road. From the big skies of farm country to the bright lights of Las Vegas, this, in typical manny fabulousness, is an all-American adventure filled with more Glamour-dos than Glamour-don'ts. But a stopover at the manny's childhood home is making the manny feel not so fabulous. Why can't his parents ever accept him for who he is? And Keats, at first, sees their point. Why does the manny always have to be so interesting? Hit the road for more manny shenanigans, where it's all about Elton John, Diet Coke, and being brave enough to be yourself.