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Megan McDonald's Stink and the Attack of the Slime Mold is a funny, gloopy science story for 7 year olds about a boy who adopts a slime mold as a pet.
It starts at the drive-in. Stink picked the Friday night monster film himself, then spends most of The Glob with his T-shirt pulled over his eyes.
Bad timing, because the very next morning at Saturday Science Club they're growing their own slime molds. Stink takes his home in a shoe box and names it Mr McGoo.
He's thrilled. Mr McGoo grows and pulses and oozes around the dish. He looks like snot, or the inside of a brain, and Stink could not be prouder.
Nobody else is quite as impressed. Stink takes him for a walk round the neighbourhood, to the pet shop and even to school. His friends ask if it's a slug. Or a booger. (Stink's answer is always the same. "It's an organism.")
Then Riley Rottenberger sneezes cheese-puff dust all over Mr McGoo. Stink is convinced his pet has turned into Frankenslime. That night he camps out on Judy's bottom bunk wearing Dad's sweaty T-shirt as a disguise.
Who hasn't been that scared of something that turned out to be nothing much at all?
Judy is brilliant in this one. She plays Dr Judy with a stethoscope and a blanket nest, and charges Stink a blue-raspberry sweet and his best rubber for the visit.
There's real science tucked in as well. Slime molds have no brain but can find the quickest way through a maze, so Stink builds one to test him. Your reader might well come away wanting to grow one.
It's silly in all the right ways, with lots of wordplay ("slime flies when you're having fun") and plenty of gross-out jokes about dog sick. It whizzes along in short chapters, so it works for a newly confident reader or reading aloud.
If you've got a small scientist who loves anything slimy, they'll adore this.
Stink mentions the time he got 21,280 jawbreakers through the post. That's a whole story of its own, Stink and the Incredible Super-Galactic Jawbreaker, and it's every bit as daft.
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