Judy Moody and Stink: The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure Hunt

Megan McDonald's Judy Moody & Stink - The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure Hunt is a funny story for 7 year olds about a brother and sister racing an entire island for a gold coin.

What happens

Stink has wanted to sail to a treasure island his whole life. He arrives on Ocracoke with a survival kit containing a compass, a spyglass, a pirate flag and a rule book, plus an eye patch he is already wearing.

He has also decided that a real pirate called Christopher Moody might be his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Judy takes this on board immediately. She has pirate blood in her, apparently.

Then a pirate on the dock hands them a map. The Third Annual Pirate Island Treasure Hunt starts in the morning. Five clues, sixteen silver pieces of eight, and a gold doubloon for whoever gets there first.

The clues are the best bit. They're proper riddles, and Judy and Stink argue their way through every single one. Is it a church or a flagpole? Is that a clue or just somebody's name scratched on a rock?

One of the answers comes back in Morse code, which is fine, because Stink keeps a Morse code notebook in his bag in case he is ever marooned.

The two of them are lovely company. They needle each other constantly and then work like a machine the second it matters. Judy calls him Stinkerbell. Stink calls her Poopy Longstocking. Nobody's feelings get hurt for more than four seconds.

And two other children keep turning up ahead of them. Tall Boy and Smart Girl, from Maine, who may or may not be spying with binoculars.

Two things about the ghost walk in the middle. It's a real tour of the island's graveyards after dark, and the guide tells the children how Blackbeard died, which is that they cut off his head and threw him overboard, and the story goes that his headless body swam around the ship seven times before it went under. Then he points out where you might see the ghost still looking for it.

It is one paragraph and it's told as local legend rather than as horror, but a seven-year-old could easily take it home with them. Read it with them if your reader is a worrier about the dark.

If they're fine on that, the rest is sunshine, hot dogs and rubbish jokes.

What to read next

Judy and Stink take on weather next. In The Big Bad Blackout they wake up to something thumping on the roof, the school closes, a hurricane is coming up the coast, and Grandma Lou is driving straight towards them with a car full of marshmallows.