Judy Moody, M.D.: The Doctor Is In!

This children's novel follows third grader Judy Moody as her class studies the human body, sparking her dream of becoming a doctor like her hero, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor.

Judy wakes up on a rainy Monday morning and tries to fake being sick to avoid school. She complains of a headache, sore throat, and stiff neck, sticking out her tongue, which is red from a cherry cough drop, as evidence. Her younger brother Stink calls her a faker and alerts their mom, who takes Judy's temperature and gets a normal reading of 98.6 degrees. Mom sends Judy to school, and Judy leaves the house grumpy, feeling like "Mumpty Dumpty" without a real fever.

Judy arrives late to Mr. Todd's Class 3T and discovers the classroom has been transformed for a new unit on the human body. Mr. Todd has hung anatomical charts, set up a bulletin board titled "Our Amazing Body: From Head to Toe," and placed a glow-in-the-dark skeleton named Bonita in his chair. Judy's mood lifts immediately. The students learn bone songs, hear about mummies, and dissect owl pellets to find rodent bones. Mr. Todd assigns Human Body projects due in two weeks. Judy's best friend Rocky plans to present on mummies, her friend Frank Pearl wants to explore cloning, and Jessica Finch, a classmate Judy finds annoying, decides to write a dictionary of medical words. Judy brainstorms her own ideas, including dressing up as Elizabeth Blackwell. Mr. Todd also announces a field trip to the Walter Reed Memorial Hospital emergency room.

The following Monday, Class 3T visits the hospital. Dr. Nosier leads the tour, and along the way the students see a doctor carrying a rabbit as part of Paws for Healing, a program that brings animals to patients to help them feel better. Dr. Nosier teaches the class emergency terminology, explains the Hippocratic oath, the promise all doctors make to help people, and compares being a doctor to being a detective. The students try real medical equipment: Judy listens to her heartbeat with a stethoscope, takes Frank's blood pressure, and views X-rays. Dr. Nosier wraps Judy's arm in a practice cast and, with Mom's permission, lets her wear it home, where she tricks Stink into thinking she broke her arm.

At home, Judy plays the board game Operation with Stink, then searches for a real body part to bring to school. She proposes performing surgery on her pet toad, Toady, but Stink refuses. He holds up his badge from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and lectures Judy about animal cruelty. After much pestering, Stink reveals a baby-food jar from his box of keepsakes containing his dried umbilical cord stump. Judy desperately wants it for Sharing Day, but Stink demands a million dollars and refuses to budge.

On Wednesday, Judy sneaks into Stink's room, takes the bellybutton jar, and hides it in her backpack. During Sharing Circle, Rocky demonstrates how many germs live on a Lego, and Jessica shares photos of her guinea pig Chester's four babies, the Spice Girls. When Judy's turn comes, she presents the bellybutton under the invented Latin-sounding name "Mucus Dermis" and explains that no two bellybuttons are alike. The class is fascinated.

After Sharing, Stink is waiting outside the classroom. He accuses Judy of stealing his bellybutton and demands his million dollars. He also says his throat hurts but admits he is too scared to visit the school nurse because of the skeleton in her office. Judy gets a hall pass and walks him there. While they wait for Mrs. Bell, the nurse, Judy picks up the skeleton, names him "Mr. DryBones," and tells skeleton jokes that make Stink laugh so hard he forgets his fear. Mrs. Bell examines Stink and finds his throat fire-engine red with a fever of 99.9. Judy envies him for being genuinely sick.

At the doctor's office, Dr. McCavity diagnoses Stink with tonsillitis, prescribes medicine, and orders the BRAT diet: Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast. Over the next four days, Judy nurses Stink at home, taking his temperature, making him a hospital bracelet labeled "Stinker," reading him mysteries and comics, and writing prescriptions on her doctor pad. She tries Paws for Healing with Mouse the cat, but Mouse claws Stink and knocks over his ginger ale. Inspired by a television commercial, Judy tries to cure Stink with a prune. She counts to three and secretly throws hers away, but Stink bites into his and spits it across the floor. Mouse pounces on the discarded prune and swallows it whole, and Judy and Stink collapse in laughter.

On project day, Judy dresses as Elizabeth Blackwell with scrubs, a stethoscope, an eye patch representing Blackwell's lost eye, fake leeches taped to her head, and plastic bags on her shoes. She recites a poem she wrote about Blackwell's accomplishments. With Frank as her surgical assistant, she introduces her patient: "Ima Green Zucchini," a zucchini with a Magic Marker face. She walks the class through surgical steps, using ketchup for blood. When the slippery zucchini breaks in two on the floor, Judy stays calm, sews it back together with needle and thread, and applies Band-Aids. Mr. Todd praises the project as a "smashing success."

The next day, Frank presents a life-size cardboard clone of himself named Stein, making them "Frank-and-Stein," and explains DNA and real-life cloning. Disappointed that nobody found the project convincing, Frank hatches a plan to clone Peanut, the class's dwarf guinea pig. During lunch recess, he snips four of Peanut's hairs, places them in a petri dish, and microwaves them while Rocky recites mock magic words. Nothing happens for several days. The following Monday, someone shouts that Peanut has a friend. Judy rushes over and sees four new guinea pigs in the cage. Frank declares he has cloned Peanut, and Judy excitedly claims shared credit. Then Rocky, Frank, and Jessica burst out laughing: Jessica had secretly placed her guinea pig babies in the cage. Judy is humiliated and furious.

The next morning, Judy wakes up genuinely sick with a painful, red throat, swollen tonsils, and a fever. Dad confirms it looks like the same tonsillitis Stink had. Mom gives Judy medicine, but the pill is so large Judy declares it "the size of Nebraska," so Mom crushes it. Being sick turns out to be far less fun than Judy imagined. She fills her time counting her Band-Aid collection, practicing her doctor autograph, and drawing cartoons of friends on her pillowcase. Despite her anger at Rocky, Frank, and Jessica, she misses them. When Stink comes home, he brings gifts from each friend and a French-language cootie catcher fortune teller he made at school.

On day seven of her recovery, Stink announces visitors. Rocky, Frank, and Jessica arrive at Judy's bedroom door. They bring a homemade T-shirt reading "PAWS FOR HEALING" covered in guinea-pig paw prints, along with live animals: Rocky's pet iguana Houdini, a Siamese fighting fish Frank has named Judy, and Jessica's guinea pigs, including Chester and the Spice Girls. Stink contributes Toady and a real Paws for Healing button from the hospital gift shop. The friends clip the iguana's toenails, set up the fish on Judy's desk, and give the guinea pigs baths. Jessica reveals that when the Spice Girls are older, her family plans to take them to the hospital for real Paws for Healing visits.

After her friends leave, Judy climbs under the covers feeling noticeably better, her tonsils less lumpy and her mood less grumpy. She reflects that friends are better than prunes, medicine, ginger ale, toast, and TV. In her mood journal, she writes a "Mumpty Dumpty" poem about how her brother and friends helped put her back together again. She takes out her doctor pad and writes herself a final prescription: Hold a dog, watch a fish, pet a guinea pig, and if those do not work, have fun with friends. She signs it with her scribbly doctor autograph: Judy Moody MD.