Judy Moody and the Right Royal Tea Party

by Megan McDonald

  Fit for a Queen

  Dear Your Majesty

  A Royal Pain

  The Mood Sapphire

  Fish Farts and Swan Songs

  H.M.R.R.S. Her Majesty’s Right Royal Spies

  Stugly Upsisters

  Pinkie Swear

  Dayus Horribilus

  High Royal Tea Party

  Judy Moody had been Doctor Judy, M.D. She had been Judy Monarch Moody and Madame M-for-Moody. She had been a Girl Detective and a Mood Martian. She had even gotten a picture of her famous elbow in the newspaper.

  But she, Judy Moody, had never been a queen. Not even a Queen Bee of Spelling. Not even Queen for a Day at the Pamper-Me-Royal Nails and Spa like Mom and Grandma Lou. She had never slept in a queen-size bed or sat on a Queen Anne chair. She had never eaten an English queen cake or laid eyes on a queen ant.

  In fact, her eight-year-old life had been very UN-queenly so far.

  Until now!

  Judy was making a tree for social studies. Not a tree with leaves. Not a tree with acorns. A family tree! A tree with grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and cousins.

  Grandma Lou came to help. She brought lots of old pictures and papers. She had charts and calendars and lists with names and dates in old-timey handwriting.

  “What is all this stuff?” Judy asked.

  “Your Grandpa Jack traced the Moody family all the way back to your thirteen-times great-grandfather. Did you know you’re related to a Moody who was on the Titanic?”

  Judy sat up. “You mean that giant ship that sank? I saw it in Stink’s Big Head Book of Disasters.”

  “That’s the one. When the ship hit an iceberg, the young Mr. Moody helped people into lifeboats 12, 14, and 16 before he died.”

  “Whoa,” said Judy.

  “And if you go even further back on the Moody side to the time of Queen Elizabeth I, you have a British cousin. The name Moody means brave, and this fellow was known for his bravery. The story goes that he rescued a prisoner from the Tower of London.”

  “Tower of London?” Judy asked. “You mean the castle where they keep all the jewels?”

  “Yes, but they used it as a prison, too.”

  “So my cousin rescued someone from the Tower of London?” Judy couldn’t believe her ears. “Maybe he rescued a princess! What if he was a prince? That means he was related to the queen. So my cousin was a royal!”

  Judy fell right off her chair. This was news. BIG FAT news. She had royal blood. She, Judy Moody, was just-might-maybe related to a queen!

  RARE!

  Wait till she told Tori! Tori was Judy’s pen pal from London. As in England! As in where the queen herself lived! Tori knew everything about the Queen of England. She had probably been to tea at the queen’s house.

  Palace, that is.

  Speaking of tea, Grandma Lou went to put the kettle on. Judy had to write to her pen pal right this very second. She ran upstairs and grabbed her Grouchy pencil.

  Judy pinched herself. She didn’t feel any different. Same old Judy.

  Maybe if she put on something purple? Queens wore purple. Judy loved all things purple. She had a purple sock monkey, a purple mood ring, and a purple jump rope.

  One whole wall of her room was painted Saltwater Taffy purple. “Purple is the color of royalty, Mouse,” Judy told her cat. Kings and queens and princes, oh my!

  Judy plumped a purple pillow. “Here, sit on this, Mouse. You’re a royal cat now. Just think — being related to a queen is like . . . if you were related to a lioness.”

  Mouse dove under the rug. “Mouse, I dub thee Royal Mouse Catcher.”

  Judy snatched her fuzzy purple bathrobe from behind the door. She draped it over her shoulders like a cape. Her royal robe! Every queen needed a streak of purple hair. She sprayed a hunk of hair zombie-purple with purple hair spray.

  Brill-short-for-Brilliant!

  Judy dug in the back of the closet for an old cardboard crown from Royal House of Pizza. A few stick-em jewels would jazz it right up. She slipped on her candy necklace — just like priceless pearls. Chomp! She ate a purple one.

  Judy Moody took out her Famous Women Rulers ruler. Cleopatra. Amina. Lili‘uokalani. Queens, queens, and more queens. Not just princesses. Queens of Egypt. Empresses of China. Queens of England. Maybe even queens related to her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa. Thirteen times great!

  She, Judy Moody, imagined taking her place on that ruler. She wrote in her name, Judy the Great, right next to Catherine the Great, Isabella of Spain, and Nefertiti. Move over, Queen Elizabeth I! Make room for Judy Moody, Y.Q.E. Youngest Queen Ever. Oh, wait. Mary, Queen of Scots, was queen when she was only six days old. The Famous Women Rulers ruler did not lie.

  Mary, Queen of Babies.

  But still.

  Judy held her head straight. She held her head high. She put on the cardboard crown, sparkling with stick-em gems. She carried her Famous Women Rulers ruler like a royal scepter. She practiced floating across the room like a queen.

  Judy sat on her throne (aka window seat) in the Royal House of Moody. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and became a queen.

  She, Judy Moody, Queen of Moodovia, lived in a castle with seventy-eight bathrooms that had swan-shaped bathtubs. It had 7,000 famous paintings, a movie theater, and her very own personal money machine, not to mention the crown jewels. She swam in the royal pool all day and played with the royal dogs and turned cartwheels through the palace gardens with fountains that spouted chocolate.

  She was in a royal purple on-top-of-spaghetti-and-the-London-Eye mood!

  Judy couldn’t wait to tell her teacher, Mr. Todd! She was going to have the best family tree in the history of Class 3T. For sure and absolute positive.

  Judy Moody was feeling purpler than a princess. Like a queen! Under her bed, she found the royal purple T-shirt she had gotten all the way from for-real England. It had a crown on it and said KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. Judy took out her best permanent marker and added LIKE A QUEEN.

  Her heart stepped up a beat. Keep calm and carry on? How could she keep calm when she had just found out she was related to a queen?

  Judy could not wait to write to the queen and break the good news. She could not wait to tell her they were almost cousins!

  Stink came home from karate. “Why is your hair purple? Is that snail snot? Or were you using my zombie stuff?”

  “Stink, guess what. I’m practically a queen! Ask Grandma Lou.”

  “Grandma Lou had to go home,” said Stink.

  “Well, she told me our name goes back to old-timey England and I’m related to Queen Elizabeth the First. No lie!”

  “Queens got their heads chopped off. No thanks.”

  “For your information, a queen gets to live in a castle and drink tea and play Monopoly all day and boss people and own as many dogs as she wants. And she doesn’t have to do homework. Ever.”

  “Well if you’re royal, then I am, too.”

  “Yeah, a royal pain.”

  “Hardee-har-har,” said Stink.

  “I wish so bad I had a lucky sixpence for every time you said that, Stinkerbell.”

  Before Judy could start her letter to the queen, Mom called, “Lunch!” Judy duct-taped a construction-paper tail of peacock feathers to the back of a kitchen chair. “From now on, this will be the royal chair. Like a throne. Only I get to sit in it.”

  She hung a sign on the back of the chair.

  Judy sat upon her throne. “Mom, Dad, we need to talk.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Mom.

  “Uh-oh,” said Dad. “What did we do now?” he teased.

  “Si
nce I’m a royal now, I should have two birthdays. The queen’s birthday is in April, like mine, but she has another birthday with a big fat party in the summer.”

  “I think I see where this is going,” said Dad.

  “We could celebrate my real birthday in April. Then, in summer, we could have a second giant party with a parade and fireworks and pony rides and a bouncy castle. Did I say fireworks? Maybe we even could shoot off a cannon. What do you say?”

  “Then I get two birthdays, too!” said Stink.

  “I think one birthday is plenty for an eight-year-old,” said Mom.

  “Not even if we skip the cannon?” Judy asked.

  “Not even,” said Dad.

  Judy slumped back in her throne. “Can we at least have the Drooping of the Colors?”

  “I think it’s Trooping the Color,” said Mom.

  “What’s that?” asked Stink.

  “You fly a lot of flags,” said Judy. She held up a British toothpick flag and waved it half-heartedly.

  “If I can’t have two birthdays,” said Judy, “how about I get a nanny? Someone like Mary Poppins to teach me stuff. She could come live with us and I’d call her ‘Miss’ and we’d sing all the time and have tea parties on the ceiling and fly around on her umbrella. Her brolly, I mean.”

  “Who knows,” said Mom, “maybe a magic English nanny will get blown by the east wind right over to 117 Croaker Road.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Judy. “But can we at least have jam pennies? Those teeny-tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off? That’s what the queen eats at teatime.”

  “What’s so great about being related to a queen anyway?” asked Stink. “I mean, it’s not like we get to live in a castle or swim in a moat or something.”

  “Or something,” said Judy. “But we had a royal cousin who was locked up in the Tower of London, Stink. No lie.”

  Stink bolted up in his seat. “Wait! What?”

  Dad explained. “A long time ago, the Moody name was Modig. Somewhere along the way the name got spelled Mudeye. Your grandpa Jack traced him back to the Tower of London. But we don’t exactly know why he was there.”

  “Mudeye Moody!” said Stink. “Hey, that sounds like a pirate name. What if we had a cousin who was a real pirate? I bet a mean queen locked him up in the tower because he wouldn’t give up all his loot.”

  Stink dashed upstairs and came back wearing his pirate eye patch. “Avast, ye mateys! Hand over your loot.” He pretended to steal Judy’s candy necklace.

  Judy pushed back her royal chair. “I have a letter to write. I mean — I must catch up on my royal correspondence posthaste.”

  “Sounds official,” said Mom.

  “It is! I’m writing to my cousin, the Queen of England, to tell her who I am.” Judy searched through the pencil mug on the kitchen counter. “Where’s my purple pen? All letters to a queen should be written in purple.”

  “I don’t see why purple is the color of kings and queens,” said Stink. “Don’t they know it comes from snail snot?”

  “Does not,” said Judy.

  “I saw it on the Olden Days Channel. The first time they invented the color purple, it was made from snail slime.”

  “Sometimes you know the weirdest stuff, Stink.”

  “Thanks!” said Stink.

  Upstairs, Judy opened the box with all the stuff from England that Tori had sent.

  A teapot. The Shaun the Sheep movie. London Bridge eraser and Big Ben eraser. Union Jack flag. The London Underground game. Where’s Wally? coloring book. Sugar packet collection.

  Voilà! Judy would not only write a letter to the queen. She would send her a sugar packet. A sugar packet for her tea. A sugar packet with a British flag on it.

  Judy popped her gum and chewed on this: What in the world do you say to a queen? Finally, she ripped a sheet of paper from her notebook. A letter to the queen had to look posh. She fancied it up with some glitter glue and a drawing of a queen.

  The next week, Class 3T had a whole hour of library time each day to work on family trees. Judy drew branches on her family tree using her Famous Women Rulers ruler. She cut out sticky notes in the shape of acorns.

  “My family tree is going to be lift-the-flap,” Judy told Rocky and Frank. “When you lift up each acorn, you find out about the person under it.”

  “Neat-o!” said Frank. Frank was making a cardboard Christmas tree for his family tree. And Rocky was hanging family photos from a real-live tree branch.

  Mr. Todd came over to take a peek. “Good work,” he said. “Very creative.”

  “What happens when we’re done?” asked Judy.

  “You’ll each get a chance to tell the class something surprising about your family history,” said Mr. Todd. “Then we’ll display the finished trees in the library.”

  “Like a family-tree forest,” said Judy. “Wicked!”

  Jessica Finch came over to Judy’s table. “I made a bad goof,” she said. “Does anybody have an eraser?”

  Judy held out her London Bridge eraser and her Big Ben eraser. “Pick one. But don’t use it all up. These are like the crown jewels of my eraser collection.”

  “I’ll take the pink one,” said Jessica. Of course.

  “Don’t forget to give it back,” said Judy. Sometimes Jessica Finch was an E.E.S. Evil Eraser Stealer.

  “Check it out,” said Rocky, holding up an old photo. “This is my great-great-grandpa. He searched for gold at the Cripple Creek gold mine.”

  Judy squinted at the photo. “What’s he doing?”

  “Um. He’s either panning for gold or making soup.”

  Frank nodded. “I have a great-grandpa from the Middle Ages who sold either pears or pearls.”

  “So your name could have been Frank Pear instead of Frank Pearl?”

  “I know, right?” Frank cracked up. “And I have another great-grandpa who was in a famous shipwreck on the Lusitania.”

  “Same-same!” said Judy. “I have somebody that went down on the Titanic!”

  “Mine escaped in a lifeboat,” said Frank.

  “That’s brill,” Judy said.

  “Huh?” said Rocky and Frank at the same time.

  “She means brilliant,” said Jessica, butting in again. “It’s like wicked. It’s how you say excellent or awesome in England.”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” said Judy. “See, my family tree is from England. I learned funny British words from Tori, my pen pal. She lives in London.”

  “I see London. I see France . . .” said Frank.

  “You do?” Judy flushed red. She checked to see if her underwear was showing.

  “Made you look!” said Frank.

  “Good one,” said Judy.

  “You better go to the loo and check,” said Jessica. “Just in case.”

  “The loo?” asked Rocky.

  “The who?” asked Frank.

  “The bathroom,” Judy whispered.

  Judy looked in the mirror, front and back. Phew! No sign of undies. She brushed eraser crumbs off of her KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON T-shirt. Wait just a Big Ben minute. How did Jessica A. Finch know so much British stuff?

  Judy plopped back down at their table. She made sure Jessica could hear.

  “My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa was related to a queen. Queen Elizabeth the First of England. Just think — maybe he was the queen’s royal brother or something. She probably put him in charge of the crown jewels at the Tower of London. So you are looking at a queen!”

  Rocky hung another photo from a branch. Frank peeled dried glue from his hand. “Hey, look, I’m shedding.”

  “Hel-lo! Don’t you get it? I have royal blood. I’m related to the Queen of England. I could, like, be invited to a sleepover at the palace or something.”

  “Cool,” said Rocky.

  “Cool,” said Frank.

  “You mean wicked,” said Jessica, turning around. Nosy Parker. Snoopy McSnoop.


  “Guys,” said Judy. “We’re talking castles, moats, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Tower of London!” Frank’s eyes bugged out.

  “You mean where all those people” — Rocky drew an imaginary line across his neck — “got their heads chopped off?”

  “Yah-huh. It holds the crown jewels — some of the biggest diamonds in the world. And it used to have a zoo with lions and tigers and a polar bear and alligators and about a hundred rattlesnakes. Six ravens still guard the tower at all times.”

  “And they had a lioness named Elizabeth,” said Jessica.

  Judy gaped at Jessica. How did Jessica Know-It-All Finch know this?

  “What?” said Jessica. “I overheard you talking about the Tower of London. So, when the lioness died, everybody thought Queen Elizabeth was going to die, too. But you probably knew that.”

  Jessica Queen Bee Finch knew about queens, too?

  Judy held out her hand. “Eraser. Can I have it back, please?”

  “You mean rubber?” Jessica handed it back. Two of the bridge towers were worn to nubs. Sometimes Jessica A. Finch was beastly.

  “London Bridge is falling down,” said Rocky.

  On Saturday, Judy taped a British flag on her door. “The queen flies a flag when she’s in the palace. So if you see this flag, Stink, it means I’m in my room.”

  The doorbell rang. “Judy!” Mom called up the stairs. “Grandma Lou’s here.”

  Judy took down the flag and ran downstairs.

  “Grandma Lou,” said Judy. “What are you doing here?” She gave her grandma a great big fat hug. “Ouch!” Judy cried, pulling away to see what felt scratchy.

  Judy could not believe her royal green eyes. Her royal mouth fell open.

  Grandma Lou was wearing a long fuzzy sweater. On the front of her royal purple sweater was a peacock. Not just any old peacock. A peacock with all the colors of the ocean and a tail made of jewels. And there, right in the center of the peacock’s tail, was the brightest, shiningest, sparklingest jewel Judy had ever seen.

  It was as blue as the Star of India. It was as green as the Patricia Emerald. It was as sparkly as the Hope Diamond. The crown jewel of the Royal House of Moody, right here in her very own living room.