Three children have had it with their mother, and magically make her disappear. They then head out to the "Mommy Market" for a replacement mother.

Elizabeth, Jeremy, and Harry Martin have had it with their workaholic, nagging mother and they get in trouble at school with bullies and almost smoking cigarettes. They go to a mysterious gardener named Mrs. Cavour who tells them about an ancient spell to make their mother disappear. That night they say the incantation and the next morning, they wake up and they find that she is gone, and they can't remember anything about her. Mrs. Cavour tells them about the Mommy Market, a place in town that has about every mother you could think of. When they go there, it has a policy where you can have three tokens to take a mother home. If they can't find a suitable one by their third token, they can never go back. The ones they pick are not what they hoped for, and they feel lost without someone to look after them. They want their very own mother to love and must think of a memory of their own to remember her and break the spell.—mountain91