The "Great Recession" of 2008 has struck the United States. Calista Snipe's family is adversely affected by the recession. Her father loses his job as a college professor and although Calista's mother continues to work part time, the family's income has been greatly reduced. Now her father is faced with the probability that his unemployment checks will cease if Congress does not vote to extend them. When a very rare monkey, a gibbon, escapes from the local zoo, Calista decides she will catch the gibbon and give the reward money to her father. In her search for the escaped gibbon, Calista enlists the help of her best friend, Skyler McCray. Skyler and Calista joined forces when they were in fourth grade to solve the mystery of the lost purse. Now, two years older, they believe they are up to the task of finding and capturing Papillon, the missing gibbon. However, the challenge of catching the little monkey soon becomes more difficult than they had anticipated as Papillon continually travels from one city park to another, and Cali and Sky discover that they do not have the best of equipment to capture a gibbon. To complicate their task, they discover that other parties are interested in capturing the monkey, and these parties are not happy to find that Cali and Sky are in the competition to win the reward money. To Catch A Monkey explores the impact of the 2008 recession on a middle class family, peer bullying, beginning awareness of puberty for later elementary grade children, and the strengthening friendship between a sixth grade boy and girl.