Judy Moody and Stink: The Holly Joliday

Megan McDonald's Judy Moody and Stink: The Holly Joliday is a funny Christmas story for 7 year olds about a little brother whose whole Christmas list is one word long.

What happens

That word is snow. Stink doesn't want snow boots or a snow hat (well, maybe a snow-cone machine). He wants real snow, in Virginia, where it hardly ever falls.

Judy thinks that's boring. Her own list is written on toilet paper, because nothing else is long enough, and it unrolls right down the stairs. With five days to go, she's very sure her brother is wasting his chance.

Then a new postman turns up. He's got a white bushy beard, a furry hat and a terrible joke about frostbite. His name, he says, is Jack Frost. And he reckons he can taste snow in the air.

Is he really Jack Frost? Stink is completely convinced. Judy is having none of it, and the fun is that neither of them can quite prove it either way.

In between there's the school's holiday show, which is a proper highlight. Judy's class sings a Hawaiian version of The Twelve Days of Christmas while a classmate's parrot keeps squawking Mary Had a Little Lamb. Then Stink, who's supposed to be a mouse in The Night Before Christmas (AGAIN), comes on stage as something else entirely.

Reading it feels like being in the room with the two of them. They tease and bicker and crack awful puns ("Yule never know!"), and you can tell they'd be lost without each other. There's a lovely bit of big-sister kindness on Christmas Eve too (no spoilers).

The last stretch is a countdown to midnight. Judy and Stink have a bet on whether it'll snow, and they're trying to stay awake to find out. Coffee gets tried and spat straight out. Apparently it tastes like tree bark!

If you've got a reader who's ever wished really hard for something at Christmas, they'll be rooting for Stink all the way. It's a short, cosy read and a good one to save for December.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Judy and Stink swap snow for sunshine in The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure Hunt. This time they're on a family trip to an island, racing to solve pirate clues for a gold coin.