judy moody's moods

this is not an "age appropriate" book for me. my 9-year-old friend rachel passed on to me, "judy moody gets famous." it turned out to be fun.

the 3rd grader judy is jealous because her classmate has her picture on a paper for winning in a spelling contest. imaginative judy comes up with a number of schemes to make herself famous as well. none of her ideas work out quite the way she planned. unintentionally, she encounters a situation where she gets to fix all the dolls at a hospital for sick kids. her deed is depicted anonymously in the local newspaper as an act of a phantom. she feels more filfilled than having her picture in the paper.

interestingly enough, the celebrated theme is pretty similar to what i was growing up reading in a communist society: ie., do the good deed, don't have your name mentioned.

the basics of the humanity are pretty much the same everywhere: the desires of being good and of virtue, the moods of being jealous and bitter. different ways of teaching in moralities and religions sometimes make the differences so insurmountable. it's a privilige if we can always keep ourselves in touch with the basics of the matter. the rest is just fun. megan mcDonald certainly makes the book a lot of fun to read.