It’s good to see Walker Books reissuing the Judy Moody books including:

Judy Moody Gets Famous!
Judy Moody Saves the World!
Judy Moody Around the World in 8½ Days
Megan McDonald, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds

It’s her multitude of moods that make Judy who she is and now she’s on a quest to get fame, fuelled by the fact that arch rival Jessica Finch has got her photo on the front page of the newspaper having won a spelling contest. Green with envy, Judy currently feels ‘about as famous as a pencil’.

Can she too get her own fifteen minutes of fame? Definitely not on account of her spelling skills but what about with that cherry pip that our resourceful miss advertises at the garage sale as a ‘Genuine Cherry Pit from George Washington’s tree’ (dating back to 1743)? Err, maybe not. 

But does Judy ever get her write-up? Yes, but to find out how, you’ll need to get your hands on a copy of this charmer of a tale that’s ideal for new solo readers.

Saving the world is the irrepressible Judy’s intention; rather it isn’t actually, for what she sets out to do in the second story is to win the Crazy Strips 5th ‘design your own bandage contest’. But then her little brother Stink decides to enter too and unlike big sis, he has done his design and sent it off before Judy gets an inkling of inspiration.

Thank goodness then for Mr Todd’s science lesson about the devastation of rainforests. Suddenly Judy sees her entire family and people at school using products that include constituents from the rainforest – coffee, ice-cream, chewing gum, lipstick and pencils. At last she has a mission but now all she has to do is save the rainforest … 

Again, delightful, quirky humour eventually wins through.

In Judy Moody Around the World in 8½ Days there’s a new girl in Judy’s parallel class. Like Judy she has a rhyming name – Amy Namey – and she also collects chewing gum. Guess who isn’t happy? What will Amy be: best enemy or new best friend? 

When Amy invites Judy to join the My-Name-Is-a-Poem club, Judy becomes devoted to her new friend, which definitely doesn’t go down well with her old pals.

Something that does though is the ginormous pizza that culminates the Y3 classes project …

There’s a lesson to be learned from this story that puts me in mind of a song a friend once taught one of my foundation stages classes that begins thus, ‘Make new friends /But keep the old. / One is silver. / The other gold.’

Due partly to Peter H. Reynolds’ terrific illustrations, Megan McDonald’s Judy Moody certainly deserves her following and these reissues will surely win her lots more friends.