Best Selling Books by Megan McDonald

Judy’s mom takes the spotlight as the Moody family tries to give her the birthday she would like in a broadly funny episode just right for newly independent readers. Make a wish, Mrs. Moody! Every year on Mom’s birthday, one way or another, something goes wrong-not-right. Maybe Judy’s been in a bad mood. Maybe Stink’s gotten a little carsick. Maybe Dad can’t bake Mom’s favorite carrot cake. But this year is going to be different. This year is going to be perfect. This year, Judy is going to do all she can to make sure Mom gets the happy birthday she deserves. Watch out! The Boss of Birthday (aka Judy) is on the job! Parsnip cake with avocado frosting, anyone?

Judy and Stink co-star in their second full-color adventure — crawling with pirates and puzzles, carbuncles and chuckles. As soon as the Moody family drops anchor on "Artichoke" Island, they are greeted by Cap’n Weevil, a one-eyed buccaneer with a scraggly beard and a secret treasure map. Before you can say "Davy Jones’s Locker," Stink and Judy are racing across the island in search of gold. But—shiver me timbers!—they’re not the only salty dogs lookin’ for loot. Can Mad Molly O’Maggot and Scurvy Stink beat out their rivals, Tall Boy and Smart Girl? Can they find the hidden clues, crack the secret codes, and solve the tricky puzzles before time runs out? Aaarrr!

Amy Namey is chasing a news story in this Judy Moody® story for newly independent readers. Amy Namey, Ace Reporter, is on the hunt for a good news story. But not a lot happens in the town of Frog Neck Lake. So what’s a budding reporter to do? Team up with Judy Moody! With Judy along to sniff out a story, anything can happen. Like maybe a close encounter with the famed Great Virginia Sea Serpent, Taboo! Are Amy and Judy about to stumble upon the scoop of the century?

Mighty righty Judy Moody is out of her element in this righty-to-lefty switcheroo just right for newly independent readers. Left-handers are creative. Left-handers are geniuses. Half of all cats are lefties! (Or so says Stink.) But Judy is a righty . . . and Judy is feeling left out. Tomorrow is Left Handers Day, and Stink and Dad, the southpaws in the Moody family, are celebrating at the pretzel factory. Judy is allowed to come along on one condition: she has to be left-handed — the whole entire day. It’s on!

Surprises are in store as Stink excavates his backyard in search of a relic from an extinct beast — and Judy lends him a little sleight of hand. Mega-chomp! Stink wants to make the find of the century. He’s on a dig, dig, digging quest in his backyard to find a tooth from a saber-toothed cat, otherwise known as a Smilodon. Why not? Two kids in Michigan found a mastodon bone in a backyard stream, and a girl in Great Britain found a pterosaur bone. It could happen! But Judy thinks the chances of finding a saber-toothed anything in the Moody backyard are one in a gazillion million. Will Stink make a discovery before their whole backyard caves in? Just right for newly independent readers, this latest story from Megan McDonald is sure to leave Moody fans with smiles as wide as a Smilodon’s.

Eliza has a second adventure on the other side of the fairy door—and must call on her wits when a band of impish hobgoblins follows her home—in this enchanting tale by the award-winning author of the Judy Moody series. What’s that? Eliza hears faint music coming from behind the teeny-tiny fairy door she created low on the wall. So she presses her ear to the door and—shwoosh!—is whisked into the red, rocky land of hobgoblins, leaving behind the heaps of toys and books that were strewn around her room (along with her mother’s orders to clean them up). Luckily, Eliza discovers that the pointy-hatted hobs love to play, love a mess, and can grant wishes! But when she wishes that Hobby, Nobby, and Tobby would help her with her room, she learns that what hobgoblins actually love is playing tricks—and as they burst into her space, it’s clear that she’s fallen for their trickery. Can she outrun their mischief before they decorate all of her walls with crayon and turn her ceiling fan into a hobgoblin merry-go-round? Just maybe . . . but only if she can come up with a few tricks of her own! Megan McDonald’s follow-up to Eliza and the Flower Fairies, illustrated in glowing full color by Lenny Wen, is sure to be happily devoured by every child who fervently believes in fairies and other magical folk.

It’s all systems go for a bedtime voyage to the stars and to Mars! Stink and his best friend, Webster, let their imaginations fly at their first-ever sleepover. Three, two, one . . . sleepover! Stink can’t wait for Webster to arrive and sleep over for the very first time. Big sister Judy is ready with all the important rules: (1) You have to have a theme. (2) You have to have an activity. (3) You have to have snacks. (4) You cannot sleep! When Webster shows up in his outer-space pj’s, it doesn’t take long for a theme to emerge. Stink’s race-car bed doubles as a spaceship and an old keyboard is a control panel as the explorers suit up, buckle in, and blast off . . . Va-room! Playful illustrations and astronaut lingo capture their imaginary adventure from takeoff to spacewalking, while more creativity comes into play when they land and experiment with space-worthy snacks.

Amy Namey is chasing a news story in this Judy Moody® story for newly independent readers. Amy Namey, Ace Reporter, is on the hunt for a good news story. But not a lot happens in the town of Frog Neck Lake. So what’s a budding reporter to do? Team up with Judy Moody! With Judy along to sniff out a story, anything can happen. Like maybe a close encounter with the famed Great Virginia Sea Serpent, Taboo! Are Amy and Judy about to stumble upon the scoop of the century?

As Hurricane Elmer hits, Judy, Stink, and the entire Moody clan hunker down and ride out the storm, but when the power goes out, Grandma Lou proposes some activities to pass the time in the dark.

Stink and his friends try to earn money to buy the latest book in the Nightmare on Zombie Street series and go to the book release party.

Books, books, books! Judy’s got books on the brain as she prepares for a totally RARE trivia competition. Has reading always been this exciting? Judy Moody is in it to win it. Win the Book Quiz Blowout, that is. Judy and her brother, Stink, are two-fifths of the Virginia Dare Bookworms, and they’ve been reading up a storm to prepare for Saturday’s face-off against second- and third-grade readers from the next town. Judy’s trying out all kinds of tactics, from hanging upside down like Pippi Longstocking to teaching herself to speed read The Princess in Black, and Stink has fashioned a cape of book trivia sticky notes to help him remember all the penguins in Mr. Popper’s Penguins. But when Judy, Stink, and their fellow teammates discover the other group has a fourth-grader (no lie!), they get a bit nervous. Are the Bookworms up to the challenge?

A latest full-color adventure in the series that includes The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Treasure finds Judy, Stink and the whole Moody family riding out a hurricane-induced blackout in their basement while playing musical board games and telling stories with Grandma Lou.

A-roo-ga-roo! Stink and his friends can’t wait to learn wilderness survival skills. But first the pack of friends will have to survive scouting . . . and one another! Brushing your teeth with a stick! Pooping in the woods! Stink and his friends are raring to learn all that and more in Survival Scouts. Wait! What? Survival Scouts is for boys only? No fair! So with Riley Rottenberger (aka the Great Golu) at the helm, Stink and his friends decide to form their own troop of nature explorers: the Big Bad Badgers. There will be badges to earn, climbing-up ceremonies, and awards to win. But never did these squabbling scouts imagine survival would be much harder than tying knots, reading animal tracks and scats, or even eating an insect. Ack! The Golden Honey Badger Award is starting to feel like an impossible dream to this pack of (bickering) badgers! What do they have to do to earn the coveted prize? Fans of wild backyard nature hunts—and champions of cooperation—will be hot on the trail of this quintessential Stink adventure, with fun extras at the end of each chapter. Cricket pancakes, anyone?

Shark-tastic! Stink gets to sleep with the fishes after his parents win an aquarium sleepover. But wait — what’s that lurking beyond the KEEP OUT sign? When Stink’s parents win tickets for the whole family to sleep over at the aquarium (along with Stink’s two best friends), it sounds like a science freak’s dream come true. Stink loves the sea-creature scavenger hunt (Bat ray! Brain coral!), the jellyfish light show, and the shiver of sand tiger sharks with razor-sharp teeth. And of course Stink is nuts about gross stuff, but after some spooky stories around the virtual campfire, can he manage to fall asleep thinking about the eating habits of the vampire squid? Especially Bloody Mary, the mutant, glowing Frankensquid that’s supposed to be on the prowl?

Pee! Gee! Wee! Gee! What’s that sound? With her birthday coming up, Jessica hopes that, just maybe, her present will be a real-live potbellied pig. Jessica can hardly wait for her party with Judy Moody and all their friends. But Judy Moody is acting like a pig-head, and Jessica UN-invites her from the party. To make matters worse, Jessica has snooped around the house and has found zero sign of a pig present. Could her birthday be any more of a disaster? Geared to newly independent readers, this story will have Judy Moody fans in pig heaven.

From the beloved author of the Judy Moody and Stink series comes the first in a sparkling series of chapter books about a girl whose love for magic and fairy folk takes her on enchanting adventures Imagine a door. A teeny-tiny fairy door. Now imagine it is magic. Open the door. To some, the low door in Eliza’s bedroom might look like an ordinary entrance to a crawl space under the stairs. But to a believer like Eliza of the Elves, it’s the door to the Land of UnderStair, a secret hideout all her own. In that crawl space, festooned with twinkling lights, Eliza keeps her favorite book, her collections of precious items, her stuffed animals, and her new diary. And in that crawl space is another door, a teeny-tiny one that can transport Eliza to a world of tangerine sun and lemon-pudding sky, a place where flower fairies perch on every bloom and a new flower springs up whenever you pick one. But in a far corner of that world, Eliza tries to pick a strangely beautiful flower—“Nooooo!” cries her friend Poppy—and things soon go terribly awry. Can a brave, wilting Poppy rescue Eliza from beyond the hedgerow before the Demon Wind steals all the flower fairies’ scents, leaving the snapdragons with no snap? In this launch of a new series, Megan McDonald brings her well-honed flair for wordplay to delicious villains like the witches Wolfsbane and Belladonna as she follows a child with a big imagination to a different fairy realm in each book. Lenny Wen’s delightful, richly colored artwork brings Eliza’s world to life with fanciful details sure to have readers creating their own cozy retreats—and visiting magical lands beyond the door.

Third grader Judy Moody is in a first day of school bad mood until she gets an assignment to create a collage all about herself and begins creating her masterpiece, the Me collage.

A trove of vintage comic books and a few forensic tips turn Stink into a super sleuth in an adventure that honors classic superheroes and mystery-solving. Cheek! Chack! Chirp! At a Moody family yard sale, Stink uncovers a box of old comics about a hero he’s never heard of: Super Gecko. What could be more fantastic than a superhero with lizard superpowers? Hello, fun! Even better, Super Gecko is making a comeback, and Stink quickly becomes his number-one fan. Stink starts receiving mysterious notes signed by Super Gecko himself. But Super Gecko isn’t real, is he? Using his own powers of deduction—thanks to all the cool stuff he’s learning at Saturday Science Club—can Stink figure out who is writing the letters?

After Judy obtains a mood ring, she tries to convince herself and her third-grade classmates that she can predict the future.