• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

For four days, she fed Toady. For four days, she brought Stink his homework. For four days, she watched Megazoid and the Deltoid Bananas with Stink, even though she wanted to watch the Operation Channel.

That’s when she saw it. In an ad on TV not prescribed by Dr. McCavity. The one-and-only, for-sure cure for Stink.

“Are you tired all the time?”

Yes. Stink was sleeping right now!

“Are you sick? Want to be healthy? Live longer?”

Yes, yes, and YES!! Judy told the TV.

“We have a secret just for you. PRUNES!” said the cartoon lady on TV.

“PRUNES!” cried Judy. “UCK!”

“Bite them, chew them. Don’t pooh-pooh them,” said the TV lady. “CALIFORNIA PRUNES! The energy-packed super snack. Majorly delicious! Off to climb Mt. Everest? Take some PRUNES with you today.”

Judy did not think Stink would be climbing Mt. Everest anytime soon. He could barely climb out of bed. But it was worth a try. All she had to do was convince Stink to eat one prune.

Judy tiptoed downstairs and opened the kitchen cupboards. Tea bags, peanut butter, pretzels, crackers. . . . They had to be here somewhere. Judy pulled a chair over to the up-high cupboards. Ah-ha! A shiny bag!

Gravy?!

Gravy did not help you climb Mt. Everest. Gravy did not cure tonsils. Gravy did not make you live longer.

She spotted a yellow sun shining on the front of a pink and purple bag. Finally! Judy stared at two shriveled lumps. Prunes were icky. Sticky. Prunes were wrinkly as elephants and looked like one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old buffalo droppings. Two-hundred-year-old dried-up bellybuttons. Two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old tonsils. Why do you have to eat bad stuff for good stuff to happen?

The world was backwards, according to Judy Moody.

Dr. Judy went back upstairs. “Stink! Wake up!” said Judy.

“Wha . . . ?”

“I have your cure! Right here in my hand. No more fever. No more grapefruit tonsils.” Judy held out her hand. She showed Stink the prunes.

“What? What are those?” asked Stink.

“Prunes. The secret to not getting sick. The secret to climbing Mt. Everest.”

“They look like moon rocks. Or petrified prune rocks.”

“They do kind of look like the owl pellets we had in Science. . . .”

“Owl pellets! Owl pellets are hairballs. Owl pellets are spit-up.”

“Prunes are just plums,” said Judy. “C’mon. One bite.”

“No way, Prunella De Vil. I am not eating a hairball. I am not eating spit-up.”

“Don’t you want to live longer? Don’t you want to have teeny-tiny tonsils again?”

“Okay. Then help me. Say nice things about prunes,” said Stink.

Judy sniffed a prune. “They don’t smell like buffalo droppings.”

“That’s the nicest thing you can say about a prune?”

“They’re not hairy.”

“Not hairy is good,” said Stink.

“I know,” said Judy. “Close your eyes. On the count of three, we’ll BOTH eat a prune at the same time.

“One, one thousand —”

Stink closed his eyes tight.

“Two, one thousand —”

Judy threw her prune in the trash.

“Three —”

Stink actually put the prune in his mouth.

“Eee-yew!” cried Stink. Thwaaa! Stink spit out the prune. It went flying across the floor and landed in a dust ball. “I licked it! It touched my taste buds!”

“It’s supposed to taste MAJORLY delicious. The TV said so,” Judy told him.

“It tastes majorly disgusting,” said Stink. “You tricked me!”

“I was just trying to help you feel better,” said Judy. “Now I’m a bad doctor and you’ll never feel better.”

“I feel better knowing I’m not going to eat that prune.”

“Stink, don’t you get it? That was the last prune. Now it has cat hair and spit all over it. What are we going to do?” Before you could say majorly dust ball, Mouse pounced on the cat-hairy spit-up prune.

“No! Mouse! Wait!” said Judy.

It was too late. Ga-loomp! Mouse chewed it up and swallowed. Hairball, spit, and all. Judy and Stink fell on the floor laughing.

Prune Lips licked her paws, face, and whiskers. “Mouse,” said Judy, picking up her cat, “you are going to live a very long life.”

“Nine long lives,” said Stink.

Doctor Day! The day Judy got to dress up like Elizabeth Blackwell,