"David can eat an entire sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza in four minutes and thirty-six seconds. Not bad. But he knows he can do better. In fact, he'll have to do better. He's going to compete in the Super Pigorino Bowl pizza-eating contest, and he has to win it because he borrowed his mom's credit card and accidentally put two thousand dollars on it. So he really needs that pizza money. Like, yesterday. And as if training to be a competitive eater weren't...

In 1983 seventh-grader David Da-Wei Horowitz has a lot to worry about--his bar mitzvah is coming soon, his Jewish and Chinese grandmothers argue about everything, his teammates for the upcoming trivia contest, Scott and Hector, do not like each other, he is beginning to notice girls, and Scott has persuaded him to begin digging a fallout shelter just in case the Cold War heats up.