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Megan McDonald's Judy Moody and the Bucket List is a funny story for 7 year olds about a girl with a VERY long list of plans for before fourth grade.
It starts with Judy rummaging through Grandma Lou's handbag for a pack of cards. Instead she finds a list. Ride an elephant. See the pyramids. Dance the rumba.
A bucket list, Grandma Lou explains, is all the things you want to do before you kick the bucket. Judy is horrified for about a minute (Grandma Lou is fine, and plans to be around for a good long time). Then she's inspired. Judy is the Queen of Lists, after all.
So she makes her own. Invent something. Learn to do a cartwheel. Ride a horse. Go to Antarctica! It's Antarctica that causes the trouble, because Stink reckons it costs a thousand dollars and Judy has thirty-three dollars and forty-one cents.
Cue the money-making schemes. Asking for more pocket money (no). Sitting on the kerb with a bucket (two dimes and a linty cough drop). Scooping a neighbour's dog poop for fifty cents. Stink is certain it's moose poop.
It's that kind of book. Silly, fast and full of Judy's own words. Way-cool! Same-same! For-real! She's got a name for everything and a mood for every occasion. Spending time with her is like hanging out with the most dramatic kid in the class, who also happens to be the most fun.
Stink is brilliant in this one. He's annoying, he knows everything about animal poo, and he's actually quite helpful. There's a lovely bit where he teaches her a song about contractions, sitting on the heater at the end of the school corridor.
Who hasn't made a list of big plans and come a cropper on the very first one? Judy's list mostly goes wrong. The hairbrush she invents by pulling out all the bristles. The cartwheel that ends with her on her bottom. But she keeps crossing things off anyway, and along the way she meets a new friend who walks an invisible dog.
Judy Moody Was in a Mood is in the library too, and it's a great way in if Judy is new to your reader. It's the first day of the school year, summer's over, and she's in a bad mood before she's even out of bed.
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