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Megan McDonald's Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer is a summer holiday story for 7 year olds about the best summer ever, planned in advance and ruined immediately.
There are 27 minutes of school left. Judy has already worked out exactly what her summer will look like.
She has made a chart. Thrill Points, Dare Points, Bonus Points, Loser Points and a Big Fat Total at the bottom. It took her two days and sixteen erasers.
The rules are simple. A dare is something fun you have never done and are a bit scared of. Ten points each. Reach a hundred and you have officially had the best summer ever.
Then Rocky mentions he is off to circus camp. Amy is off to Borneo. Judy laughs, because obviously they are winding her up. They are not winding her up.
It gets worse. Her parents have to fly out to California to help her grandparents, so Judy and her little brother Stink are staying at home with an aunt she last met as a baby.
Judy knows nothing about this woman. She could be a zombie, for all Judy knows.
Judy does not do a mood by halves. She puts a sign on her bedroom door announcing that she is spending the entire summer in her room. She has sorted the food deliveries already (a basket and a long rope). She has built a periscope out of tin cans and mirrors so she can still watch TV.
She also asks a Magic 8 Ball whether summer could possibly get any worse. It says WITHOUT A DOUBT.
Your reader gets all of this in Judy's own words, and most of her words are invented. Thrill-a-delic. Bored-e-o. Way-rare. Double-drat. If a child must spend a whole summer thoroughly fed up, this is a very funny way to do it.
Stink is running his own summer alongside hers. He is going to catch Bigfoot, and he has a blanket covered in leaves, twigs and cranberries to prove it.
If you've got a child who plans things out on paper and then has to watch the plan collapse, they will recognise every bit of this. Nobody is ever in real trouble. It is sulking, scheming and a brother who will not stop talking about giant footprints.
Stink gets a book to himself too. Stink and the Incredible Shrinking Kid has him as the shortest in the family, measured by Judy every single morning, until the day the ruler says he has gone backwards.
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