Judy Moody

“A Venus flytrap,” the lady said. “It’s not an animal, but it doesn’t cost much, and it’s

It was Labor Day, a no-school day. Judy looked up from her Me collage on the dining-room table

“The way you took an accident like this and turned it into something good.”

It stunk like a skunk!

leaf-cutter ants and fire-bellied toads,”

two-toed sloth

lump that purrs.”

a box of body parts (from dolls!

got up on the wrong side of the bed?

It was pouring outside. Judy’s dad would not let her leave for school without an umbrella, and the only one she could find was her first-grade yellow ducky one. She wouldn’t open a baby umbrella, so she got soaked clear through. The sun is probably shining over the president’s house this second, thought Judy. She felt like a bike left out in the rain.

“Frank wants to come over after school too,” Rocky told her on the bus. “And I have a brand new ten-dollar bill from Nay-Nay. We can go to Vic’s after school and buy something really rare.”

“Do they have any real gold at Vic’s?” was all she said.

In Spelling, Judy wrote WEASELS when Mr. Todd had really said MEASLES. In Science, when Jessica Finch threw Judy the ball of yarn for their giant spider web, she dropped it. It rolled out the door just when Ms. Tuxedo, the principal, walked past in high heels. And at the Brush Your Teeth Week assembly, Mr. Tooth picked Judy to be a cavity. On stage. In front of the whole school.

She could not get her mind off Stink at the president’s house, where she wasn’t. Seeing all that real gold. Would he get to shake the