Stink: Solar System Superhero

Megan McDonald's Stink: Solar System Superhero is a classroom comedy for 6 year olds about one small planet getting a very raw deal.

What happens

Stink Moody has a science test tomorrow on all nine planets and knows about exactly one of them. Saturn. He is, he would tell you, a Super Saturn Expert.

Saturn has rings. Saturn would float in a giant's bath. Saturn spins so fast it goes flat as a pancake. Stink has the whole S encyclopedia sorted and nothing else.

So he goes to find his big sister Judy, hoping she is in a help-your-little-brother mood. She is on her top bunk making a Venus flytrap out of Already-Been-Chewed gum, which is not promising, but she does hand over the trick. My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. First letters. Nine planets. Sorted.

Then Stink gets the test back with a red X on it the size of a spot on Saturn.

There is no pizza. There is no P. Pluto has been voted out.

Stink takes this personally, and honestly, so would most six year olds. Something small got measured, found wanting and dropped off the list. Stink is a champion of small things and he is not having it.

So he starts a campaign, which means taking on a panel of proper scientists and a classmate called Riley Rottenberger who has been to Space Camp and mentions it constantly.

The jokes come fast and your reader picks up an enormous amount of solar system along the way without being taught anything. Judy and Stink bicker exactly like a real brother and sister, which is to say she is rude to him and helps him anyway.

One small thing for a UK reader. This is an American school, so Stink is in second grade with a teacher called Mrs D, and there is a hall pass and a field trip and a lot of soccer. Nothing that stops the story, but a six year old may ask what grade means.

There is no caution to give on this one. The worst that happens is a bad mark and a smug classmate.

What to read next

If Stink wins them over, Stink and the Incredible Shrinking Kid is in the library as well. That one starts with Judy measuring him every single morning and the ruler refusing to move.