Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid

Megan McDonald's Stink and the Incredible Shrinking Kid is a funny story for 6 year olds about a boy who is the shortest person he knows.

What happens

Stink is the shortest in his family, apart from the cat. He's the shortest in his class. He is one whole head shorter than his big sister Judy, and every single morning he makes her measure him.

Every single morning the answer is the same.

His list of complaints is excellent. He has to drink from the baby fountain. He's always at the front for class photos. He's always cast as a mouse in the school play, and as he puts it, he'd quite like a speaking part rather than a squeaking part.

So he eats all his peas. He drinks all his milk. He doesn't tip any of it into Judy's glass when she isn't looking. Then he demands to be measured again, and this time he has gone down a quarter of an inch.

Judy is very helpful about this. She offers to stretch him out like a rubber band with Mum and Dad on a leg each. She suggests he eat more seafood, specifically shrimp. She lends him a hair gel that will make his hair stand up and make him look taller, and the small print is that it turns his hair orange for a week.

If you've got a child with an older sibling, they will recognise every bit of this. Judy is not being cruel exactly. She's just enjoying herself enormously.

What's nice is that Stink never sulks for long. He puts on up-and-down stripes because stripes make you look taller. His friend renames herself Sophie of the Elves and points out that to an elf he'd be a giant, possibly even the Elf King, and Stink takes this as a genuine comfort.

Then his teacher happens to read the class a story about a boy who shrinks, and Stink puts his hand up to ask whether it's true.

One practical note. It's American, so heights come in feet and inches and Stink is in second grade. That's easy enough to explain, and the jokes work whatever you call the class.

What to read next

If your reader would rather hear from the sister doing the measuring, Judy Moody's own first book is in the library, where she starts the new school year in a properly bad mood and turns up to breakfast in tiger-striped pyjama bottoms.