Judy Moody, Book Quiz Whiz

by Megan McDonald

  Judy Longstocking

  A Bookworm Is Not a Worm

  Unicorns Don’t Wear Pants

  Goldfish Thinking

  Brain Freeze

  Grumpy Bacon

  The Mighty Fourth-Grader

  Super Book Quiz Whiz

  Bookworms vs. Bloodsucking Fake-Mustache Defenders

  Third-Grade Something

  A list of all the book titles, series, and authors mentioned in this book can be found at the end of this book.

  Books, books, books. Piles of books. Miles of books. Stacks of books. Backpacks of books. Towers of books. Hours of books.

  Judy Moody read books on her top bunk. Judy read books in the Toad Pee Club tent. Judy read Catwings aloud to Mouse the cat. She read Inspector Flytrap to Jaws, her Venus flytrap. When she read to Stink’s guinea pig, Astro, she could tell he liked The World According to Humphrey, even though Humphrey was a hamster.

  She, Judy Moody, was a book quiz whiz. A book wizard. A quizzard!

  Stink read books, books, and more books, too. He read books on the bus. He read books at karate class. He read books during breaks at Saturday Science Club.

  For each book he read, he made sticky notes to help him remember stuff: Spanish words in Juana & Lucas, cases solved by Timmy Failure, poems in Wet Cement.

  Not only was Stink a super reader, he was as fast as lightning on the buzzer. Bzzz! He practiced at breakfast. Bzzz! He practiced in the backseat of the car. Bzzz! He practiced in the bathtub.

  “Just think, Stink. In one week, we’ll be at the Starlight Lanes Bowling Alley facing off in the First Ever Book Quiz Blowout for Virginia Dare School.”

  “The Bookworms rule!” Stink held his hands high in the air.

  “Yeah we do!” Judy double-high-fived Stink. “But the other team is going to be pretty hard to beat.”

  “We already won three games. We beat all the other second- and third-grade teams at our school!” Stink bragged. “We’re undefeated!”

  “Not exactly, Stink. We only won that last game because the other team . . . you know . . . had to . . . forfeit.”

  “Oh, yeah! Some kid barfed his answer and ran to the bathroom and he was too pukey to get back in the game!”

  Judy made a yuck face. “Don’t remind me.”

  “We still have a gazillion books to read by Saturday,” Stink told Judy.

  “Two gazillion,” said Judy. “We have to read as many books as we can from Book Quiz Master Lists One and Two.” She was hanging her head upside down off the edge of her bed, reading Pippi Longstocking.

  “Why are you reading upside down?” asked Stink.

  “Pippi does this! Just call me Judy Longstocking. It’s a fact that if all the blood rushes to your head, it helps your brain.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says fellow Bookworm Jessica A. Finch.”

  “I think it would be better to have a superpower,” said Stink. “One where you can hold a book up to your head and all the words fly right into your brain.”

  “Rare!” said Judy without looking down from her book.

  “Brainstorm!” said Stink. He ran to his room and came back wearing the cape from his Super Stink costume. Sticky notes were stuck all over his cape. “Super Sticky-Note Man to the rescue!”

  Just then, Dad called up the stairs. “Dinnertime!”

  Judy and Stink ran downstairs with books under each arm. Sticky notes flew from Stink’s cape like a trail of breadcrumbs.

  “This is new,” said Mom, noticing Stink’s cape.

  “Like it? I’m making sticky notes about all the books I read. To help me remember stuff. I call it the Cape of Good Answers.” Stink opened El Deafo and turned to chapter eight.

  “Sorry. No books at the dinner table,” said Dad.

  “But I have to find out what happens to El Deafo at the sleepover.”

  “Dad’s right,” said Mom. “I’m all for reading, but this is our time to talk as a family.”

  “We have to keep reading to be ready for the Book Quiz Blowout!” said Judy. “Our team, the Virginia Dare Bookworms, is up against the Bloodsucking Fake-Mustache Defenders in the B.Q.B., Book Quiz Blowout.”

  “That’s an unusual team name,” said Dad.

  “And get this. They’re from Braintree Academy,” said Judy.

  “They even have brain in their school name,” said Stink.

  “Mr. Todd told us that all the team names at their school had to be based on a book that was on the reading list. There was a book on the last list called Fake Mustache, about a kid who gets a fake mustache. For real.”

  Stink reached behind his neck and pulled off a sticky note. “The Heidelberg Handlebar Number Seven!” said Stink. “With the fake mustache, he can rob banks and stuff.”

  “He even becomes president,” said Judy.

  “It’s great to see you kids so into reading,” said Dad.

  “You’ve both been reading up a storm for weeks,” said Mom. “I think you’re going to do great.”

  “I hope so. Our whole team has been reading like crazy,” said Judy. “Frank Pearl read all the animal books on the list and Sophie of the Elves read all the fantasy books.”

  “And You-Know-Who read Charlotte’s Web three times!” said Stink.

  “Jessica Finch,” said Judy. “She loves pigs. And guess what. If we can beat Braintree, we win the Book Quiz Wizard’s Cup for our school.”

  “It lights up!” said Stink.

  “Sounds like you have a good chance at a trophy,” said Mom.

  “Webster’s family owns the Starlight Lanes Bowling Alley, and he says everybody gets to go bowling and have a bottomless taco party after! They even have silver-dollar-pancake tacos with ice-cream filling. No lie.”

  “What, no Cockroach Clusters and Chocolate Frogs?” asked Judy.

  “Nope. Wait, what’s that?” Stink asked.

  “Wizard food,” said Judy. “Or should I say quizzard food.”

  “Eww. Teeny-tiny tacos are way better,” said Stink. “And all the money that the bowling alley makes that day will go to buy new books for our school libraries.”

  “Now do you see why we can’t stop reading?” asked Judy.

  “I do,” said Mom, laughing. “But for now, how about if you focus on eating your turkey burger.”

  “Super Sticky-Note Man is going in!” Stink took a big bite of turkey burger. Judy sneaked a peek at Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing under the table.

  “Hey! No fair! Judy’s reading under the table!”

  “Stink!” said Judy. “Stop busting me. Don’t you want to win?”

  “If I catch you reading at the table again,” said Dad, “guess what I’m going to do?”

  “Send her to her room without supper!” said Stink.

  “Something much worse,” said Dad.

  Gulp!

  “I’m going to rip out the last page of that book, so you’ll never know the ending,” Dad said, with a tilt of his eyebrow and a rascally grin.

  “Nooooo!” Stink cried. “What if the last page holds the answer to the winning question in the Book Quiz Blowout?”

  Judy crossed her heart. “I promise I’ll wait till after dinner to read.”

  “Good,” said Mom. “But Dad was just kidding. Weren’t you, Dad?”

  “Of course. I’d never really rip up a book,” said Dad, still teasing a bit.

  After dinner, the whole family took turns reading aloud from Charlotte’s Web, right up to the hold-your-breath chapter when Wilbur was on his way to the fair.

  “Bedtime,” said Mom.

  “No fair!” said Stink. They climbed the stairs to their rooms.

  “No reading ahead,” Judy called downstairs. Mom and Dad
cracked up.

  Under the covers, Judy read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by flashlight. Stink read The Mouse and the Motorcycle by moonlight.

  Judy and Stink read books every spare minute, from Freckle Juice to Fantastic Mr. Fox, Princess Cora and the Crocodile to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

  They read books from the library. They read books from Mrs. Soso’s garage sale. They read books from the Little Free Library in front of Fur & Fangs.

  At school, third-grade Bookworms Judy Moody, Frank Pearl, and Jessica Finch were allowed to miss journal writing to read Book Quiz books in the school library.

  Just as Fudge was about to swallow Peter’s pet turtle, Stink came rushing over to the Bookworms’ table with Sophie of the Elves. “You’re never going to believe what just happened!” Stink said, out of breath.

  “You finished The Pain and the Great One?” asked Jessica.

  “You finished Lulu and the Hamster in the Night?” asked Frank.

  “You finished Eight Class Pets Plus One Squirrel Divided by One Dog Equals Chaos?” asked Judy.

  “No!” cried Stink. “Wait. That’s not even on Master List One or Two.”

  “I know,” said Judy. “That was a test. You passed.”

  “Anyway, I was walking back to class from music,” said Stink, “and some fifth-graders called me a bookworm.”

  “You are a Bookworm,” Judy pointed out. “That’s the name of our team.”

  “But they said bookworm like it’s a bad thing!”

  “Stink’s right,” said Sophie. “I heard it too. Especially the worm part.”

  “Bookworms aren’t even worms,” said Jessica. “They’re actually insects that munch on books. Like the deathwatch beetle.”

  “At least they didn’t call you a deathwatch beetle,” said Sophie.

  “Ignore them, Stinkworm,” said Judy. “They’re just jealous because you’re on the winning team.”

  “Bookworms are cool, Stink. Why else would there be so many posters about them?” Frank pointed to the front wall of the library.

  KEEP CALM AND BE A BOOKWORM

  BOOKWORMS RULE THE WORD

  TAKE A BITE OUT OF A GOOD BOOK

  “Mrs. D. said Sophie and I could stay in the library to read for Book Quiz, too,” Stink said. “What book should I read next?”

  “Here’s a good one,” said Judy. “It’s about two bad rats.”

  Stink opened The Infamous Ratsos. He turned the page. He cracked up when the Ratso brothers took turns spitting on the playground to look tough. He turned another page. He cracked up some more when they shoveled snow to play a trick on Mr. O’Hare and it backfired.

  He turned another page and spotted a bookmark. “Hey! Look what I found in this book.” Stink waved a two-dollar bill in front of Judy’s face.

  “Mine!” said Judy, trying to grab it.

  “Is not,” said Stink, holding it out of reach.

  “Is too! I’m the last one who checked that book out.”

  “Okay, then what’s on the back?” Stink asked.

  “Um, an eagle. No, wait. A president. No, wait. Eagle.”

  “Wrong!” said Stink.

  “Drat. I thought I fooled you,” said Judy. “That two-dollar bill is way rare.”

  “It has to be worth at least three dollars,” said Stink.

  “You’d better go show Willa, the new librarian,” said Jessica Finch.

  “Show me what?” asked Willa, passing by their table.

  “Stink found rare money in a library book,” said Jessica.

  “It’s just a two-dollar bill,” said Stink.

  “Must be your lucky day,” said Willa. “The only money I ever found was Monopoly money. But I have found some strange things in books over the years.”

  “Really?” asked Stink. “Like what?”

  “Hmm. Let’s see. I’ve found a lottery ticket, a key, bubble-gum comics, a recipe for mac and cheese, fortune-cookie fortunes, half a taco shell, a piece of bacon, and baloney.”

  “Bacon for a bookmark!” said Stink.

  “And baloney!” said Sophie, giggling.

  “Not too long ago I found a snowflake in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle,” said Judy.

  “Didn’t it melt?” asked Frank.

  Judy flipped to page fifty-seven and pulled out a paper snowflake.

  “All I ever found in a library book,” said Frank, “was a squished bug.”

  “Yesterday when Jessica was checking books in for me,” said Willa, “she found something interesting. Tell them, Jessica.”

  “I found a letter,” said Jessica. “Not just any letter. A love letter!”

  “Whoa! Can we see it?” asked Stink and Sophie.

  “Sure. Why not?” said Willa. Jessica followed Willa to her office. When Jessica came back, she unfolded a piece of pink notebook paper. “I know who wrote it.”

  “Who?” asked Frank. “Tell us!”

  Jessica Finch made sure nobody else was listening. “I think it was Mr. Todd,” she whispered.

  “Mr. Todd? Our teacher, Mr. Todd?” asked Judy. “Mr. Todd of Class 3T?”

  Jessica nodded. She showed them the note and read it out loud. “Roses are red, violets are blue, you look like a krayon, and you act like one too.”

  “Gross,” said Stink.

  “No way did Mr. Todd write that,” said Judy.

  “Remember when Ms. Tater came to our class? She wrote a book about crayons. Then we found out that she was Mr. Todd’s girlfriend.”

  “No way,” said Judy. “One, Mr. Todd does not write on pink smelly paper. Two, Mr. Todd does not print like a second-grader. No offense, Stink. Three, Mr. Todd would never spell crayon with a k.”

  “I think Judy Moody, Girl Detective, is right,” said Frank. “Especially the spelling thing.”

  “I rest my case,” said Judy.

  Stink pushed back his chair and got up to go. “Stink, where are you going?” Sophie asked. “You didn’t finish your book yet.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Stink.

  “But we still have twelve and a half minutes of library time,” said Sophie.

  Stink headed straight to the chapterbook section. “Yeah, but maybe somebody left bacon in a book,” said Stink. “Or a taco. Or baloney!”

  The next day after school, Stink found Judy sitting crisscross applesauce on the floor of her room, flipping the pages of The Princess in Black lightning-fast. He was eating a slice of cold pepperoni pizza.

  “Want some?”

  Judy didn’t look up. Flip, flip, flip. She kept turning pages.

  “Check this out,” said Stink. He put down the pizza. He held out his new T-shirt for her to see. It said: I READ PAST MY BEDTIME. But Judy did not look up.

  He tried to get her attention with a fidget spinner. But Judy did not look up. He spun it in his hand. He spun it on his nose. She still did not look up. Not one fidget.

  Something was strange. Something was weird. Something was not right. Her eyes were going batty. Her eyes were going bonkers. Her eyes were going cuckoo-crazy. Judy seemed to be reading, but her eyes were darting up and down like a googly-eyed pet rock. She kept flipping pages like a mad scientist.

  “What are you doing?” Stink asked. He took another bite of cold pizza.

  “I’m trying to read three-and-a-half times faster than I do now,” said Judy.

  “Speed-reading?” said Stink. “You mean you can learn to read supersonic fast? Just like that?”

  “Yep. Speed-reading is a real thing, you know. Lots of presidents were speed-readers. John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter could both read more than one thousand words a minute!”

  “I know for a fact that George Washington was not a speed-reader.”

  “Why not?”

  “He must have been a super-slow reader because he had a library book that was overdue for two hundred and twenty-one years.”

  Judy cracked up. “What!?”

  “They said the late fine would have added up to three hundred thousan
d dollars.”

  “See? George Washington could have saved himself a ton of money if he had just taught himself to speed-read.”

  “Yeah, then it wouldn’t have taken him more than two hundred years to read the book.”

  “Guess what,” said Judy. “There’s a for-real speed-reading champ named Anne Jones who read Harry Potter Book Seven in forty-seven minutes.”

  “That sounds made up,” said Stink.

  “For real. No lie!”

  “Yeah, but I bet she’s a grown-up. No way a kid could do that.”

  “I heard about a fourth-grader who can read forty-one pages in thirty seconds.”

  “Whoa,” said Stink.

  “Pretty soon, I’ll be reading at the speed of light. Then I’m going to teach Grandma Lou. That way, she can finally read the longest Harry Potter book and cross it off her before-she-dies bucket list.”

  “Sweet,” said Stink. “Can you teach me, too?”

  “Sure,” said Judy. “So, right now you probably read a book word by word, one sentence at a time, right?”

  “Uh-huh. How else would I do it? Putting a book under your pillow and hoping the words fly into your brain sure doesn’t work.”

  “Don’t read word by word anymore.”

  “Huh?”

  “Read in ‘jumps.’”

  “How does jumping up and down make you read faster?”

  “No, jumps are like chunks of words. It lets your brain take in more words all at once.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Stink.

  “Think of a tree. When you look at a tree, do you see every leaf or a whole tree?”

  “A whole tree,” said Stink.

  “Speed-reading is like that. You look at a whole page at once instead of looking at one word at a time. Here, I’ll show you. Take your finger and run it down the middle of the page. Make your eyes go down the page at the same speed as your finger. Whatever you do, don’t go back. That will slow you down.”

  Judy handed Stink her book. He took his finger and ran it down the middle of the page. His finger left behind a bright-orange greasy streak.

  “Stink! You just got pizza all over a library book.”