Judy Moody Gets Famous!

by Megan McDonald

  Who’s Who

  How Do You Spell Famous?

  The Moody Hall of Fame

  Infamous

  Fame Is the Pits

  Famous Pet Contest

  Broken Records

  Broken Parts

  Body Parts

  Judy Moody and Jessica Flinch

  Judy Moody, Superhero

  10 Things You May Not Know About Megan McDonald

  10 Things You May Not Know About Peter H. Reynolds

  Judy Moody marched into third grade on a plain old Thursday, in a plain old ordinary mood. That was before Judy got stung by the Queen Bee.

  Judy sat down at her desk, in the front row next to Frank Pearl.

  “Hey, did you see Jessica Finch?” asked Frank in a low voice.

  “Yeah, so? I see her every day. She sits catty-cornered behind me.”

  “She’s wearing a crown.”

  Judy turned to look at Jessica, then whispered to Frank, “Where’d she get that? Burger Barn?”

  “I don’t know,” said Frank. “Ask her. She says it’s bejeweled.”

  “Well, it looks be-dumb, if you ask me,” said Judy, though secretly she admired the sparkling ruby-like gems.

  “Hey, are those real rubies?” Judy asked Jessica.

  “They’re costume jewelry,” Jessica said.

  “Who are you dressing up as? The Queen of England?”

  “No, I’m the Queen Bee,” said Jessica. “I won the N. V. Spelling Bee on Saturday.”

  “The envy spelling bee?” Judy asked. Judy didn’t envy anybody who had to spell long words into a microphone with a million and one people staring bug-eyed at her. She knew those people were silently yelling FLUB IT UP because they wanted their own kid to win.

  “Not envy. N. V. As in Northern Virginia.”

  “Oh,” said Judy. “Is that where you got the crown?”

  “It’s a tiara,” said Jessica. “T-I-A-R-A. A tiara is a fancy crown like the Queen of England wears. Queen of the Bee has to know tons of definitions.”

  “What word did you win for?” Judy asked. “Frank wants to know,” she added, in case Jessica thought she was interested.

  “Artichoke. It’s a fourth-grade word.”

  Artichoke! Judy could barely spell meatloaf! Give me S-C-I-E-N-C-E any day, she thought. Was that the rule? I before E? Or was it E before I?

  “I have spelling posters in my room at home,” said Jessica. “With all the rules. I even have a glow-in-the-dark one.”

  “That would give me spelling nightmares. I’ll take my glow-in-the-dark skeleton poster any day. It shows all two hundred and six bones in the body!”

  “Judy,” said Mr. Todd. “The back of your head is not nearly as interesting as the front. And so far I’ve seen more of it today than I’d like.”

  “Sorry,” said Judy, facing front again.

  Jessica tapped Judy and passed her a folded page from the newspaper. Right there, SMACK-DAB in the MIDDLE of the newspaper for the whole world to see, was a picture of Jessica Finch. It even said LOCAL GIRL BECOMES QUEEN BEE in big fat headline letters.

  “My dad says I got my fifteen minutes of fame,” Jessica whispered to the back of Judy’s head.

  Judy did not turn around. She was green with N-V. Jessica A. Finch, Queen of the Dictionary, Class 3T, was famous! Judy could not help thinking how stupendous it would feel to be able to spell better than meatloaf and be the Queen Bee and wear a tiara. To get her own picture in the paper!

  But she, Judy Moody, felt about as famous as a pencil.

  As soon as Judy got home from school, she decided to memorize the dictionary. But she got stuck on aardwolf. Three lousy words. Who ever heard of an aardwolf anyway? Silly old termite-eater. It had a pointy little head and beady little eyes and a pinched-up face that looked just like . . . Jessica A. Finch! Jessica Aardwolf Finch might be famous, but she was also a silly old termite-eater.

  Since Jessica had become Queen Bee with the word artichoke, Judy decided to skip the dictionary and spell all the vegetables in the refrigerator instead.

  “Do we have any artichokes?” Judy asked her mother, opening the door of the fridge.

  “Since when did you start liking artichokes?” asked Mom.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat them or anything,” said Judy. “It’s for Spelling.”

  “Spelling?” Stink asked.

  “Mr. Todd does have some creative ways of teaching Spelling,” said Mom.

  “Never mind,” said Judy, giving up when she saw asparagus. Vegetables were too hard to spell. There had to be a food group that was easier.

  At dinner Judy slurped up a noodle and asked, “How do you spell spaghetti?”

  “N-O-O-D-L-E,” said Stink.

  “S-P-A-G-H-E-T-T-I,” said Dad.

  “Or P-A-S-T-A,” said Mom.

  “Never mind,” said Judy. “Please pass the B-R-E-A-D.”

  “How was school today?” Mom asked.

  “W-E-L-L,” Judy said. “Jessica Finch won a T-I-A-R-A in a spelling bee and got her picture in the P-A-P-E-R. Even if she does look like an A-A-R-D-W-O-L-F, aardwolf.”

  “So that’s what all this spelling is about,” said Mom.

  “You’re W-E-I-R-D,” Stink told his sister.

  “I comes before E, Stink. Except after C. Everybody knows that.” What a meatloaf.

  “Actually,” said Mom, “your brother’s right.”

  “WHAT?” said Judy. “How can he be right? He broke the rule!”

  “Lots of rules have exceptions,” said Dad. “Times when you have to break the rule.”

  “No fair!” Judy slumped down in her chair. She was not going to become famous by spelling, that was for sure. The three strings of spaghetti left on her plate made the shape of a mean face. Judy made a mean face back.

  Dad took a bite out of his garlic bread and asked Judy, “You’re not in one of your famous moods again, are you?”

  The next day at breakfast, Judy ate her corn flakes without even spelling them.

  There had to be lots of ways people got famous besides spelling.

  While she munched, Judy watched her little brother, Stink, hang stuff up on the refrigerator: his report card, the self-portrait that made him look like a monkey, and a photo of himself in his flag costume, from the time he went to Washington, D.C., without her. Above everything, he had spelled MOODY HALL OF FAME with letter magnets.

  “Hey!” she said. “Where’s me?”

  “I made it,” said Stink.

  “Why not leave Judy some room, honey,” said Mom. “She can hang things there too.”

  Judy ran back up the stairs, two by two. She searched her desk for things to put in the Moody Hall of Fame. But all she could find were rumpled-up papers, acorn hats, a year-old candy heart that said HOT STUFF, and a drawer full of pink dust from all the times she had erased her spelling words and brushed them into her top drawer.

  She rummaged through her closet next. All she had there were her collections: Band-Aids, fancy toothpicks, body parts (from dolls!), Bazooka Joe comics, pizza tables. Forget it. A person could not be in a hall of fame for toothpicks and Band-Aids.

  Then Judy remembered her scrapbox. Most kids, like Stink, had a scrapbook. What Judy had was a shoebox that smelled like old rubber. She stood on a chair and lifted the box down from the top shelf.

  A lock of baby hair! A tooth she lost in first grade. Mom and Dad would never let her hang dead hair up on the fridge. And nobody wanted to see an old yellow tooth every time they opened the refrigerator. Judy came across a macaroni picture of herself in kindergarten, with a screaming O for a mouth. She put it back. Stink would just love the chance to call her a noodle head. And remind her that she had a big mou
th.

  Where were her report cards? There had to be some good ones. Certificates? Blue ribbons? She must have won something, sometime. But all she found were baby footprints, half-melted birthday candles, and dopey drawings of people with four eyes that she’d scribbled in preschool.

  What about pictures of herself?

  Pictures! Judy flipped through some old photos in an envelope. She had to find something as good as the picture of Stink the time he met the president. Here she was with Santa Claus. But Santa looked like he was snoring. And there she was standing next to Abraham Lincoln (cardboard). No way could she be in the Moody Hall of Fame for having her picture taken with a cardboard president.

  Then there was the one where she was facedown on the neighbor’s driveway, throwing a tantrum, because she did NOT want to get her picture taken.

  It was no use. Judy could not think of a single thing famous enough for the Moody Hall of Fame.

  Judy went back down to the kitchen. The letter magnets on the fridge should have said THE STINK HALL OF FAME.

  “So? Where’s your stuff?” Stink asked. “Did you leave it upstairs or something?”

  “Or something,” said Judy. She hadn’t even found the crummy old ribbon from the time she won the Viola Swamp Look-Alike Contest in first grade.

  “Mom?” Judy asked. “Did you ever get your picture in the paper?”

  “Sure,” said Mom. “Lots of times. For the high school glee club.”

  “What’s glee?” asked Stink.

  “Glee means being happy,” Mom told him, “or cheerful.”

  “They put your picture in the paper just for being happy?” asked Judy.

  “No.” Mom laughed. “Glee club is a singing group.” Judy did not think anybody would take her picture just for being happy. Or for singing songs about it.

  “How about you, Dad?” asked Judy.

  “They said my name on the radio once for having the right answer to a quiz-show question.”

  “What was the question?” asked Stink.

  “How many presidents were born in Virginia?”

  “How many?” asked Stink and Judy.

  “Eight.”

  “Wow,” said Judy.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me?” asked Stink.

  “You never had your picture in the paper,” said Judy.

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I, Mom?” Stink asked. “It’s in my baby scrapbook.”

  “You’ve heard that story, Judy, about how we waited too long to leave for the hospital and your brother was born in the back of the Jeep.”

  “I was even on TV! On the news!”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Judy. “Thanks for reminding me.”

  It wasn’t fair. Her own stinky brother got to be on the real live news. She, Judy Moody, was not even famous enough for the refrigerator.

  Rocky was already waiting for them at the manhole.

  “Hey, Rock,” said Stink, “did you ever get your picture in the paper?”

  “Sure,” said Rocky. “Bunches of times.”

  “You did?” asked Judy.

  “No, not really,” said Rocky. “But they did hang my picture up in the library one time.”

  “See?” Judy said to Stink. “Even my best friend is famous.”

  “Why’d they hang your picture up in the library?” asked Stink.

  “My mom took me to the library to see this magician guy, you know? He did this trick where he took my Superman ring and made it disappear. Then he pulled it out of his sleeve along with a bunch of scarves. They took a picture of it and I’m the kid in the front row with my eyes bugging out. Not exactly famous.”

  “Still,” said Judy.

  When Judy got to school, Mr. Todd said, “Let’s go over our spelling words.” Spelling, spelling, spelling. The whole wide world was hung up on spelling.

  Judy leaned over and whispered to Frank. “Hey, Frank, ever had your picture in the paper?”

  “It’s no big deal,” said Frank. “I was three years old.”

  Adam stood up and spelled the word, “R-E-C-Y-C-L-E.”

  “What was it for?” whispered Judy.

  Hailey stood up and spelled the word, “I-C-I-C-L-E.”

  “I won the Grandpa Grape Coloring Contest in the newspaper. You had to color this dancing grape cartoon guy. He used to be on grape juice. I couldn’t even stay in the lines.”

  Randi stood up and spelled, “M-O-T-O-R- C-Y-C-L-E.”

  Even Frank Pearl was famous. For scribbling on a dancing grape.

  “Everybody I know is F-A-M-O-U-S,” Judy grumped.

  “Judy,” said Mr. Todd, “were you hoping to get a white card today?”

  A white card! Three white cards in one week meant you had to stay after school! She already had two. And it was only Wednesday.

  “Why don’t you spell the bonus word aloud for us?” Mr. Todd said.

  Bonus word? thought Judy. She hadn’t been paying attention. She, Judy Moody, was in a pickle. Pickle? Was that the word? “Could I have the definition please?” she asked.

  The whole class cracked up. “It’s something you eat,” said Rocky.

  Judy stood up. “P-O-P-S-I-C-L-E. Popsicle,” she announced confidently.

  “Very good,” said Mr. Todd. “For popsicle. Unfortunately that wasn’t our bonus spelling word for today.”

  “Jessica? Would you like to spell the word for the class?”

  Jessica Finch stood up tall, holding her pointy head so she looked very queenly. “P-U-M-P-E-R-N-I-C-K-E-L. Pumpernickel,” said Jessica, faster than necessary.

  Pumpernickel was one of those artichokey kind of words that only Pinch Face herself could spell. I bet she can’t spell aardwolf, thought Judy.

  “Judy,” Mr. Todd said, “if you study your spelling words and pay attention in class, you can avoid getting white cards and we’ll both get along famously.”

  There it was again. That word.

  It was almost time for Science, her best subject, so it would be easy for Judy to pay attention. She’d sit up straight and raise her hand a bunch, like Jessica Finch.

  She, Judy Moody, would not get another white card.

  Judy studied the squirming worm on her desk up close.

  “As you all know,” said Mr. Todd, “we’ve been raising mealworms. Today I’m passing one out for each of you to examine. You can often find mealworms at home. Where do you think you would find them in your house?”

  Judy raised her hand.

  “They like to eat oatmeal and flour and stuff,” she said when Mr. Todd called on her. “So maybe in your kitchen?”

  “Right. Good,” said Mr. Todd. “They are actually the larvae of a type of beetle. The flour beetle. Mealworms are nocturnal,” said Mr. Todd. “Who can explain what that means?”

  Judy’s hand shot up again.

  “Judy?”

  “They sleep in the day and wake up at night,” said Judy.

  “Fine,” said Mr. Todd. “This kind of mealworm is called a T. molitor. Everyone take a minute and count how many segments you find on your mealworm. Then write it down in your notebook.”

  Judy counted thirteen segments, not including the head. She wrote it in her notebook right away. While she waited for the next question, she let the mealworm climb up her finger. She let it climb up her pencil. Rare! The mealworm perched on her eraser.

  “Mealworms have an exoskeleton,” said Mr. Todd. “What do you think that means?”

  Judy knew everything about bones and skeletons. Inside ones and out. She knew the answer again. Judy shot her hand straight up in the air. Judy forgot about the pencil in her hand. She forgot about the mealworm on the tip of her eraser.

  Mr. Todd called on Rocky.

  Judy watched her mealworm fly through the air. She watched it land smack-dab on Jessica Finch. She watched it crawl up the front of Jessica’s shirt and right up onto the tip of Jessica’s ponytail.

  Judy forgot all about the white card. She waved her hand wildly at Jessica until Jessica loo
ked up, then pointed frantically at Jessica’s head.

  “Aaagh!” Jessica screamed worse than a hyena and flicked her hair to shake off the mealworm. T. molitor sailed through the air, hit the chalkboard, and fell to the floor. Class 3T went wild.

  “Class!” said Mr. Todd, clapping his hands. “Everybody quiet down. Jessica,” he said. “I’ll not have anybody throwing mealworms in my classroom.” He wrote her name on the board.

  “But I didn’t . . . it was . . . she did! . . .”

  “That’s enough. See me after Science for a white card.”

  Jessica glared squinty-eyed at Judy. Her pointy ears looked pointier. Her pinched-up face looked even pinchier. Judy faced front.

  Judy knew it was all her own fault. But she did not want to get a third white card.

  Jessica Finch probably never got a white card before, thought Judy. She probably didn’t even know before today what it felt like to get in trouble. All Jessica had was one puny little white card, and one puny little white card never hurt anybody.

  For the rest of the morning, Judy felt more and more like a bug. No, a louse.

  After lunch, her neck started to itch. Then her elbow. She scratched her left knee. Her toe itched inside her shoe.

  By the end of the day, Judy went to talk to her teacher. “Mr. Todd,” she asked, scratching her ankle, “do you think not telling the truth can make a person itch?” Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  “I think so,” said Mr. Todd. “Is there something you’re itching to tell me?”

  “Yes,” said Judy. Scratch, scratch. “In Science today?” Scratch. “It was my mealworm.” Scratch. “My fault.” Scratch, scratch. “Not Jessica Finch’s.”

  Judy told the whole truth.

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Todd. “I appreciate your coming to me with the truth, Judy. I know that’s not always easy.”

  “Does this mean I don’t have to get a third white card?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Todd. “I still want you to learn to pay better attention.”

  Mr. Todd erased Jessica’s name on the board and wrote Judy’s name in its place. Judy hung her head.