Judy Moody Predicts the Future

Judy Moody Predicts the Future by Megan McDonald is a cheerful bit of nonsense for 7 year olds about a girl who has decided she can see into the future.

What happens

It starts with seven bowls of cereal. Judy is digging for the free prize and out drops a mood ring, the silver sort with an oogley centre that is supposed to change colour with your mood.

She wants purple. Purple means joyful, on top of the world. She gets black, which means grouchy and impossible.

The ring is a good hook all by itself. Your reader will want to know what every colour stands for, and the book is very happy to tell them.

So Judy goes off to find the bad mood she must be in, and cannot manage it. Her dad says yes to the pet shop straight away. Her mum flatly refuses to tell her off about her hair. It is extremely annoying.

Then her little brother Stink tries the ring on and it turns green.

Judy chucks it in the bin, Stink fishes it out, and now it is his. Which is how she ends up announcing that she has superduper see-the-future powers, because obviously a person with magic powers deserves a mood ring more than a person who reads the encyclopaedia for fun.

Her predictions are wonderful. She predicts Stink will be reading the encyclopaedia, which he always is. She predicts the cat will walk in, having hidden a tuna treat behind her back. She predicts spaghetti for dinner, because Dad only knows how to cook two things.

Stink sees through every single one and says so, which only makes her try harder. That push and pull is the real pleasure of the book.

What you get from Judy is a narrator with very strong opinions and no interest whatsoever in hiding them. She roars at people. She calls her teacher Mr Toad and cracks herself up. She is quite certain that rings cannot lie.

It is American and the words come with it. Mom, mad for cross, and cereal boxes with prizes buried seven bowls deep. Nothing difficult, just a slightly different world.

What to read next

If they are after another big sister being driven round the bend by somebody smaller, Beezus and Ramona is in the library. Beezus is nine, her sister is four, and she is expected to read the same book about a steam shovel out loud until the end of time.