Judy Moody and the Bad Luck Charm

Judy Moody and the Bad Luck Charm by Megan McDonald is a bright, chatty story for 7 year olds about a girl who becomes completely convinced that a squashed penny is running her life.

What happens

Judy's grandma takes her roller-skating and they feed an old penny from the 1970s into one of those machines that flattens coins. It comes out with a four-leaf clover stamped inside a horseshoe.

Her little brother Stink points out that it is a squished penny and that it cost fifty-one cents. Judy is unmoved. It says lucky on it, so it is lucky.

Then she beats the grabber machine at the diner three times in a row, which nobody ever does, and walks away with a purple rhino, an orange cow and a blue monkey.

Well. That settles that.

From there the book becomes a running audit of Judy's luck. Seven marshmallows in her cereal, and seven is the best number there is. Two purple horseshoes stuck together, which is double lucky. A paper cut, which is obviously bad, except it means she gets to pick a plaster from her collection, which makes it good again.

Then ten actual dollars fall out of the plaster tin.

Watching a child decide what counts as evidence is very funny and very familiar. Judy isn't being daft. She's building a case. Everything that goes right is the penny. Everything that goes wrong quietly gets reclassified.

Stink is a lovely foil. He wants a lucky thing of his own, so he puts a ketchup packet in his back pocket and then sits on it.

The writing is loose and fast, with noises, capital letters, invented words like bummeroo, and plenty of sentences that are only one word long. It moves quickly and it's kind to a reader who is still building stamina.

This is an American book, by the way, and it doesn't pretend otherwise. There are quarters and dollars, third grade, a diner menu full of slang and a collection of Popsicle sticks. Most of it comes clear from context, but a few things will get queried.

A child who carries a special stone about in their pocket, with a set of private rules attached, will recognise Judy instantly.

What to read next

For another seven year old with very firm views about how the world ought to work, try Ivy & Bean. Bean has decided the new girl across the road is boring without once speaking to her, mainly on the evidence of a sparkly headband and a big book.