Judy Moody Saves the World!

Megan McDonald's Judy Moody Saves the World is a funny school story for 7 year olds about a girl who decides the planet needs her help.

What happens

It starts with a plaster contest. Judy wants to design her own Crazy Strip and win the Rollerblades. Her little brother Stink draws some blue bats in about five minutes flat. Judy gets nowhere.

Then Mr Todd talks about the rainforest in Science. Trees coming down. Nowhere left to put the rubbish. All it takes is one person to make a difference, he tells them.

One person! Well, Judy Moody is definitely one person.

What follows is a campaign nobody else in the house signed up for. She clears the kitchen of anything that came from the rainforest, which turns out to be a LOT of things. Dad's coffee beans. The lipstick from the bottom of her mum's bag. Stink's gumball machine. She is up doing this in the dark before anyone else is awake.

She also starts writing down every single thing her family throws away. She calls herself a Garbage Detective (a garbologist, if you want to be precise).

It's very funny because Judy is completely sincere and completely over the top at the same time. She is right about the trees. She is also standing in the kitchen making chainsaw noises at her parents before breakfast.

Most of the jokes come from Judy and Stink winding each other up. He shoves an apple core under her nose so she can get to know it. She tells him to make like a tree and leaf her alone. If you've got two at home who talk to each other like that, you will recognise every bit of this.

At school the class adopt endangered animals out of a coffee can full of paper slips. Rocky gets a salamander. Jessica Finch gets a shiny pigtoe. Judy is called last and ends up with a northeast beach tiger beetle, which is not even an animal. It's a bug.

The green message never gets preached. It arrives inside the jokes, and the funny part is always Judy's enthusiasm rather than the lesson.

One thing to flag is how American it all is. Third grade, Rollerblades, Virginia, a museum trip to see the local endangered species. Nothing in it is difficult, but a British reader may need a word explained here and there.

What to read next

If it turns out your reader is quietly on Stink's side through all of this, he gets books of his own. Stink and the Incredible Shrinking Kid has him convinced he is actually getting smaller, with Judy holding the ruler and enjoying herself far too much.