Stink and the World's Worst Super-Stinky Sneakers

by Megan McDonald

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2007 by Megan McDonald

  Cover and interior illustrations copyright © 2007 by Peter H. Reynolds

  Stink®. Stink is a registered trademark of Candlewick Press, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2010

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  McDonald, Megan.

  Stink and the world’s worst super-stinky sneakers /

  Megan McDonald ; illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A class visit to the Gross-Me-Out exhibit at the science museum inspires Stink Moody to create a variety of terrible smells to put on the sneakers he plans to enter in the World’s Worst Super-Stinky Sneaker contest.

  ISBN 978-0-7636-2834-5 (hardcover)

  [1. Smell — Fiction. 2. Contests — Fiction. 3. Humorous stories.]

  I. Reynolds, Peter, date, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.M1487Sti 2007

  [Fic] — dc22 2006052585

  ISBN 978-0-7636-3669-2 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-7636-5190-9 (electronic)

  The illustrations for this book were created digitally.

  Candlewick Press

  99 Dover Street

  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

  visit us at www.candlewick.com

  CONTENTS

  Gross Me Out

  More Fun than Earwax

  Rumpel-STINK-skin

  Toilet Water

  Eau de Corpse Flower

  Unidentified Flying Odor

  Professor Smells-a-Lot

  The Golden Clothespin Award

  World’s Worst Super-Stinky CHEATER Contest

  Mr. Stinky

  Gross me out!

  Stink-o!

  Skunksville!

  Stink Moody was in love. In love with school, that is. It was the best day ever of second grade, the best day ever for Class 2D, and maybe possibly the best day ever in the whole world and his entire life so far.

  Mrs. D. was taking Stink Moody and his class on a field trip. A smell trip. To the smelliest place on earth!

  Class 2D was going on a special trip to the Gross-Me-Out exhibit at the science museum. And Stink had a fifth sense that it was going to be the smelliest field trip ever.

  Stink carpooled with his two best not-smelly friends, Webster and Sophie of the Elves (a.k.a. Elizabeth, but nobody was allowed to call her that).

  “Hey, guys. Did you know one human being person can smell about ten thousand smells? Also, smelling peppermint makes you smarter.”

  “No way, no how,” said Webster.

  “I love peppermint ice cream!” said Sophie. “So I guess that makes me smart.”

  “How do you know so much about smelly stuff, anyway?” asked Webster.

  “His name’s STINK, isn’t it?” said Sophie.

  “No, c’mon. For real,” said Webster.

  “Don’t forget I read the whole entire S encyclopedia. Books do not lie. Especially the encyclopedia.”

  Class 2D followed their teacher into the museum. Stink ducked as he stepped through a pair of ugly red lips and giant chomping teeth at the entrance to the wonderful world of smelly stuff.

  Slimy! Oozy! Stinky! Gooey! There were beeps and toots and blinking lights in every direction. Where to start? The Vomit Machine? Musical Farts? The Burp-O-Meter?

  Stink could not decide. “I think there’s a giant nose here somewhere,” he told his friends. “I saw the picture in the paper.”

  “Count me out,” said Webster. “Where there’s a giant nose, there could be — ”

  “Giant BOOGERS!” said Sophie and Webster at the same time, shivering at the thought.

  “Well, I’m going to check out the giant nose first,” said Stink.

  “Not me,” said Webster.

  “Not me,” said Sophie.

  “Okay, smell you around!” Stink said, cracking himself up.

  Stink took an up-close-and-personal tour of the giant nose. He got attacked by giant nose hairs, peered down a big ugly bumpy throat, and skipped through the Hall of Mucus. He even learned how boogers are made — not pretty!

  “Having fun?” Mrs. D. asked him.

  “Are you kidding? This is more fun than earwax!” Stink told Mrs. D. “And educational, too,” he added. Grown-ups loved the e word. They liked to think you were learning stuff no matter what.

  Mrs. D. smiled. “Stink, you seem to be interested in the sense of smell. Maybe you’d like to try the Everybody Stinks exhibit? Nobody else seems to want to go near it.”

  Mrs. D. pinched her nose and shook her head.

  “How smelly can it be?” Stink said bravely. Mrs. D. pointed to the far end of the exhibit. Stink strolled over and read the instructions.

  “Match the body odor with the body parts they come from,” Stink read aloud. Before Stink knew it, the whole class had gathered around.

  Webster announced to the class, “Hey, everybody! Stink’s going to smell B.O.!” Stink wasn’t so sure he wanted to smell B.O. But he hated to let Webster and everybody down. So Stink mustered up all his courage, leaned over, put his nose right up to the bottle, and squeezed.

  He took one sniff, then scrunched up his face, clutched his chest, and crumpled to the floor.

  “Uhh!” everybody gasped, taking in what sounded like one big breath.

  “Ha, ha, ha! Gotcha!” Stink cried, jumping back up.

  “What did it smell like?” Sophie asked.

  “Feet!” said Stink. “It’s not that bad. Just smells like dirty socks when your feet sweat and you take your shoes off.”

  “Sounds bad to me,” said Webster.

  Stink squeezed the next bottle. “Uck. This one smells like onion. Maybe garlic. Phew! Bad breath,” Stink said, waving his hand in front of his face. “P.U. This one smells like my soccer shirt! Armpit alert!”

  “It’s B.O.!” somebody shouted. “He did it! He really smelled B.O.! And he didn’t even faint!”

  After Stink smelled all the body-part smells, he moved to the next station. Rotten eggs! Dirt! Perfume! Moth balls! Skunk! Rotten cabbage! Dog breath! Old fish! Dead broccoli?

  Stink sniffed and snuffled his way through a dozen yucky, rotten smells. He made a few faces, but he guessed every single smell right.

  “P.U.! How do you do that? You didn’t miss one!” said Webster.

  “I just follow my nose,” said Stink, sticking his expert sniffer in the air.

  “You always were nosy,” said Sophie of the Elves, laughing.

  “Some people have an excellent sense of smell,” Mrs. D. explained.

  “I smell something, too,” said Sophie.“Hamburgers!”

  “When do we eat lunch?” asked Webster. “My digestion is empty.”

  Class 2D sat at the picnic tables outside, munching on sandwiches. Mrs. D. passed around flyers from the museum about a stinky sneaker contest being held at the park in two weeks.

  Stink read the flyer.

  “Wow! Check it out! Can anybody enter?”

  “Anybody with smelly sneakers,” said Mrs. D., chuckling.

  “Stink’s are the WORST,” said Webster, backing away from Stink.

  “But my sneakers are so smelly I
had to wear rain boots today,” said Sophie, showing off her pink polka-dot boots. “I bet I can win.”

  “My sneakers will beat the pants off yours any day,” Stink told Sophie.

  “But you haven’t even smelled mine,” said Sophie.

  Stink shrugged. “I’m just saying.” His sneakers just had to be the smelliest. But what if Sophie’s were super-stinky bad, too? Or worse?

  “Well, I’m sure my daughter will want to enter the ‘Smell Monsters,’” Mrs. D. said, making air quotes with her hands. “That’s what we call her sneakers. So, I hope to see some of you there in two weeks.” Then Mrs. D. asked them all about what they learned at the Gross-Me-Out exhibit.

  “I learned that even walruses have dandruff,” said Eliza.

  “I learned the words to the diarrhea song,” said Patrick.

  “Let’s wait till AFTER lunch to hear that,” said Mrs. D.

  “I learned how to say fart in Spanish,” said Jordan. “‘Pedo.’”

  “I learned that spit is gross,” said Riley.

  “I learned that there are more critters in your mouth than people in Australia,” said Sophie of the Elves.

  “I learned that Stink is the best smeller in the world!” said Webster.

  “We should call you The Nose,” said Sophie. “You know how to smell better than a dog.”

  “Better than an ant!” said Stink. Everybody looked at him funny. “What? An ant has five noses,” said Stink, nodding his head and tapping his honker. “No lie!”

  “I’m home!” Stink called, bursting through the front door.

  “How was your field trip?” Mom asked.

  “You mean my smell trip!” said Stink. He reached into his backpack and handed his mom the flyer for the smelly sneaker contest.

  “I think it really stinks that Stink got to go to the Stinky Museum and I didn’t,” said his big sister, Judy.

  “It was so way fun. And gross. I learned a ton of smelly stuff.”

  “Like what?” Judy asked.

  “Like everybody has their own smell, except if you’re twins. And guess what? We can smell stuff even when we’re sleeping, and, oh yeah, a boy moth can smell a girl moth a block away.”

  “Mr. Nose-It-All,” said Judy.

  Stink stuck his expert sniffer in the air. “Is something burning?”

  “Ack!” said Mom, rushing to the kitchen and whisking the skillet off the stove top. She waved her hand through the smoke. “I was making toasted cheese sandwiches for you kids.”

  “And now your cheese sandwiches are toast,” said Judy, cracking herself up.

  “Good thing you smelled something, Stink,” said Mom.

  “Human Smoke Alarm!” said Judy.

  “At the museum, kids were calling me The Nose,” said Stink, tapping his right nostril. “I found out today that I can smell stuff really, really great, better than anybody in my whole class. Sophie says I smell better than a dog.”

  “I should hope so!” said Mom. Mom and Judy cracked up.

  “Woof!” said Stink.

  “And here I thought you just had a nose for trouble,” said Mom.

  “Laugh all you want,” said Stink. “But this nose could make me famous.”

  “My elbow’s famous,” said Judy, holding up the elbow that once starred in a picture in the newspaper.

  “No, I mean it. When I grow up, I’m going to do something great with this nose.” said Stink. “You can’t waste a nose like this.” He admired himself in the mirror, turning his head from left to right and studying The Nose, his best feature.

  “You could be a circus freak!” said Judy. “Like that guy with the seven-and-a-half-inch-long nose!”

  “No, I mean like a professional smeller.”

  “I thought you wanted to be president of your own candy store.”

  “That was before The Nose,” said Stink.

  “What happened to being an inventor?” asked Mom.

  “I can still invent stuff. Like an alarm clock that wakes you up with a smell.”

  “There’s no such job as a Smeller, is there, Mom?” Judy asked.

  “I don’t really know,” said Mom. “Maybe you could work for a perfume company. Or you could test smells for new products.”

  “I have a smell test,” said Judy. “Cover your eyes with a blindfold, and I’ll find smelly stuff and see if you can guess what it is. It’s called . . . the Way-Official Moody Stink-a-Thon.”

  “Easy!” said Stink. The two kids ran upstairs. Judy got a bandanna and tied it nice and snug over Stink’s eyes. She held the end of a pencil under his nose.

  “Rubbery. Smells like a pencil. . . . Eraser!” said Stink.

  “Aw!” Judy picked up a marker from Stink’s desk.

  Sniff, sniff. “Smelly marker. Red.”

  “You peeked!” said Judy.

  “Did not!”

  “Did too! Nobody can smell colors. Not even Mr. Nose-It-All.”

  “Yah-huh. It’s watermelon flavored.”

  Judy held up a bubble gum comic. Stink sniffed several times. He thought. He sniffed again. “Bubble gum.”

  “WRONG!” said Judy. “Bubble gum comic.”

  “No fair!” said Stink.

  Judy went and got her Venus flytrap. Stink sniffed the air once. Twice. “Jaws!” he said, grinning.

  “How did you know?” asked Judy. “Venus flytraps don’t smell.”

  “They do if they’ve been eating raw hamburger. And dead flies.”

  “Hold on. Wait right there.” Judy ran downstairs and came back with more stuff to smell. One by one she held them up to Stink’s nose.

  “Pepper!” said Stink. “Ah-choo!” he sneezed. “Dad’s coffee. Bluck! Lemon. Stinky cheese. Week-old pizza.”

  “WOW!” said Judy. “You even got the week-old pizza. I know you’re peeking.”

  “No way! I swear on Toady,” said Stink.

  “This time I’m REALLY going to stump you. Ready?”

  “Ready,” said Stink, sticking his nose up in the air. Judy held out the secret, smelly, Stink-stumping odorific object.

  “P.U.!” said Stink. “It’s worse than smelly sneakers. Worse than dirty socks. Worse than a skunk. It smells like one-hundred-year-old barf.”

  “Wrong!” said Judy.

  “Is it two-hundred-year-old buffalo dung?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is it a stinky baby diaper?”

  “N-O!”

  “Is it — sniff, sniff, sniff — eggs? One-thousand-year-old rotten eggs?”

  “Rumpelstiltskin!” said Judy. “How’d you guess it was stinky old eggs?”

  “You mean I guessed it? For real?” Stink yanked off his blindfold. Lumpy clumps of something disgusting were in Mouse’s cat food dish.

  “It is rotten eggs,” said Judy. “Beef-and-scrambled-eggs cat food. Mouse won’t eat the egg part.”

  “Just call me Rumpel-STINK-skin,” said Stink, cracking himself up. Judy cracked up, too.

  “So, did I pass the smell test?”

  “With flying colors!” said Judy. “You truly live up to the name Stink. From this day forward, you will be known as Rumpel-Stink-Skin, Grand Prize Winner of the Way-Official Moody Stink-a-Thon.”

  “What’s my prize?” asked Stink.

  “No prize,” said Judy. “Just the satisfaction of knowing how smelly you are.”

  “That really stinks,” said Stink.

  Stink printed a page from his favorite website called “The Science of Stink” and ran to show his family.

  “Hey, guys!” said Stink. “What’s taller than a man, smells worse than roadkill, and looks like the color of blood?”

  “An elephant painting a picture?” asked Judy.

  “No way,” said Stink.

  “Is it the Abominable Smell Man?” asked Judy. “Frankenstein Valentine?”

  “Can somebody else guess, please?” asked Stink.

  “I’m still thinking,” said Mom.

  “Let’s see,” said Dad. “How
about . . . Santa Claus driving a garbage truck?”

  “No,” said Stink. “I’ll give you a hint. It’s something Mom likes a real lot.”

  “Are you sure?” Mom asked. “I can’t imagine liking anything that smells like roadkill.”

  “Give up? It’s a corpse flower!” cried Stink. “World’s smelliest flower. It says so right here.” Stink showed his family the full-color photo of Trudy the Titan.

  “Rare!” said Judy. “It says it only blooms a few times in its life, and it stinks worse than rotten eggs for about three days.”

  “Worse than rotten fish and rotting pumpkins, too,” said Mom. “Phew!”

  “Insects like it, though,” said Dad, reading over Stink’s shoulder.

  “They can have it,” said Mom.

  “And look here,” Stink said, pointing to the bottom of the page. “It says scientists come from all over the country to take samples of Trudy’s perfume and bottle some up. Mom, you were right. That’s something I could do with my nose.”

  “Make stinky perfume?” asked Judy.

  “I meant be a scientist,” said Stink. “You know, I’d get to sniff out rare smelly flowers and study them and stuff.”

  “Bluck,” said Judy. “It says here, in the first ten hours, the corpse flower smells as bad as an outhouse. Or dead elephants. Do you really want to smell dead elephants for a living, Stink?”

  “Well, stinky perfume’s a good idea, too,” said Stink.

  “In my day we called it toilet water,” said Mom.

  “I’m serious, Mom,” said Stink.

  “I’m not kidding!” said Mom. “You can buy it at the store. It’s just like perfume, only watered down a bit. And they call it Eau de Toilette.”

  “Is that French for Odor of Toilet?” asked Stink, cracking up.

  “Something like that,” Mom said.

  “But who’d wear stinky perfume on purpose?” asked Judy.

  “Same people who pay a lot of money for toilet water,” said Stink. Dad couldn’t help snickering at that one.