Judy Moody and Stink: The Big Bad Blackout

Megan McDonald's The Big Bad Blackout is a story for 7 year olds about a hurricane turning out to be the best thing that ever happened.

What happens

It starts with a crash on the roof at dawn. Judy is certain it's a ghost bowling in the attic. Stink comes out of his room waving a lightsaber, shouting that the sky is falling.

It's their tent. The wind has picked it up off the lawn and put it on the roof.

Then Dad turns the telly up and the tropical storm has become Hurricane Elmer, and the radio starts reading out school closures. Stink crosses his fingers on both hands.

No school. For days, probably.

What makes this one such a good time is that the storm never actually threatens anybody. The Moodys are indoors, safe, with marshmallows, and the whole book is about what you do with yourselves.

Grandma Lou arrives from the coast in a yellow Mini with a kayak on the roof. She's brought a pug, a ferret and a corn snake, because she's pet-sitting for neighbours who've gone to a shelter that won't take animals.

The kayak is called Gert. There's a story behind that and it's a good one.

Then the power goes. And everything gets better.

They play Musical Board Games, which is Musical Chairs with four games set up round the room. They cook eggs in the fire in bread cut out with a ghost-shaped cutter. They toast marshmallows and tell stories. Stink makes a poster of nine things to do in a blackout and compares himself to Abraham Lincoln roughly every four pages.

Stink is very funny in this one. He hears "evacuate" as "evaporate". He asks whether they should be boiling water, then breathing into a paper bag, then standing in a doorway, working his way through every emergency he's ever heard of.

And Judy corrects him every single time, which is exactly how it goes in real life.

If you've got a reader who likes a story where the fun is in the details rather than the peril, this is a lovely one. There's nothing frightening in it, though a child who's recently sat through a real power cut or a big storm may find it brings it back.

What to read next

It's the third time Judy and Stink have shared a book. Another of those is The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure Hunt, where the family head to an island off North Carolina and Stink finally gets the pirate holiday he's been after.