Judy Moody Predicts the Future

Judy Moody, an opinionated and mood-prone third grader, becomes obsessed with predicting the future after finding a mood ring in her cereal box.

Judy eats through seven bowls of cereal before the mystery prize finally falls out: a silver mood ring with a color chart explaining what each color means. She presses her thumb to the ring's center, hoping for purple, which stands for Joyful, On Top of the World. Instead, the ring turns black, meaning Grouchy, Impossible. After repeated attempts to change the color, the ring stays stubbornly black. Judy tries to provoke her parents and her younger brother, Stink, into putting her in a genuinely bad mood, but no one cooperates. Frustrated, Judy declares the ring worthless and throws it in the trash. Stink retrieves it, puts it on, and watches it turn green. He refuses to give it back, arguing that she threw it away.

Determined to recover the ring, Judy devises a plan: If she can prove she has psychic powers, Stink will have to surrender it. She "predicts" that Stink is reading the encyclopedia (he always is), lures their cat Mouse into the room with a hidden treat, and reads their mother's mind by guessing obvious thoughts about chores. She correctly predicts their dad will make spaghetti, the only thing he knows how to cook besides ziti. Stink tests her by asking her to guess his favorite number; Judy guesses seven, his age, and is right. But when Stink asks her to guess a color, he says "eggplant," which Judy insists is a vegetable. Stink remains unimpressed.

On a rainy Saturday, Judy spots a toad in Mouse's water dish on the back porch and catches it. The toad looks just like their former pet, Toady, whom Judy had previously released. She hides the toad under a bucket in her Toad Pee Club clubhouse, an old blue tent in the backyard. She lures Stink outside and performs a dramatic psychic act, pretending to sense a bumpy, greenish-brown "presence." When Stink lifts the bucket and finds the toad, he is overjoyed, believing Toady has returned just as Judy predicted. He identifies a distinctive black stripe over the toad's right eye, the same marking the original Toady had, leaving Judy herself shocked that the toad may actually be Toady. Convinced of Judy's powers, Stink willingly returns the mood ring.

On Monday, Judy wears her best outfit and the mood ring turns light blue, meaning Happy, Glad. Her teacher, Mr. Todd, announces that Judy's class, 3T, will have a math test that day, a spelling test on Wednesday, and a visit from a special guest author the following Monday. At recess, Judy uses the mood ring to "predict" what color it will turn on her classmates. She predicts amber for her friend Rocky, and the ring obliges. She predicts light blue for her friend Frank Pearl, and the ring cooperates. When classmates tease that Frank and Judy are in love because the ring turned the same color on both of them, Frank turns red. Back in class, the ring flies off Judy's finger and lands at Mr. Todd's feet. He confiscates it. As he puts it away, Judy catches a glimpse of the ring turning red on his finger. Red means Romantic, In Love.

That evening, Judy discovers a library book called Predict Your Head Off! about famous predictors, including a man called the Sleeping Prophet who, as a child, slept with his spelling book under his head and woke up knowing every word. Inspired, Judy places the fattest dictionary in the house under her pillow, dreaming of earning a perfect score and a Thomas Jefferson tricorn-hat sticker for Great Job, Good Thinking, a prize that usually goes to her competitive classmate Jessica Finch.

The next morning, Judy feels confident, using big vocabulary words she attributes to the dictionary. She notices that Mr. Todd is wearing new glasses and a crayon tie. During the test, Judy finishes first, even before Jessica, and boldly predicts at lunch that she will earn a perfect score. When Mr. Todd passes back the tests, humming and handing out heart-shaped cookies with sprinkles, Judy discovers she has earned only a quill-pen stamp, meaning Keep Trying, having misspelled "tortilla" and "zigzag." Jessica proudly displays her Thomas Jefferson sticker, and the class mocks the Sleeping Speller's failed prediction. When Judy ignores Mr. Todd's instructions, he sends her to Antarctica, a disciplinary desk in the back of the room with a sign that reads CHILL OUT.

Humiliated, Judy gives up predicting. Jessica tells her about a Happy 8 Ball, a yellow smiley-face ball that only gives positive answers, but Judy dismisses it. After school, she finds a real Magic 8 Ball at Vic's Mini-Mart. When her friends leave, Judy privately asks the ball her Very Important Question: "Is Mr. Todd in love?" The ball answers: "Yes, definitely."

At home, Judy pieces together the evidence: the mood ring turning red, Mr. Todd's new glasses, his humming, the cookies, and the crayon tie. She devises Operation True Love. On Friday, she approaches Mr. Todd with a science question about mood rings. He slips the ring on to explain how liquid crystals respond to body heat, and it turns red again. On Saturday, Judy checks out Find Your True Love from the library, which describes methods for identifying someone's beloved: floating alphabet letters in water, pressing an apple seed to someone's forehead while singing the alphabet, and observing which direction candle wax drips.

On Monday, Judy tries the floating-letters experiment on Mr. Todd's desk, but the ink runs and it fails. At recess, she convinces Mr. Todd to stick an apple seed to his forehead and sing the alphabet. The seed falls off at the letter T. That afternoon, the guest author arrives: Ms. Tater, the Crayon Lady, a colorfully dressed woman with crayon earrings. Mr. Todd introduces her as "a special friend." Ms. Tater presents her nonfiction book about how crayons are made, revealing that she once named her own crayon color, Pumpkin Moon, and that Mr. Todd helped her think of it. During her demonstration, she lights a candle. Afterward, Judy notices all the wax has dripped to the left, which according to her book means a woman is in love. She watches Ms. Tater smile at Mr. Todd and realizes "Tater" starts with T, matching the apple seed result. Judy concludes that Mr. Todd and Ms. Tater are in love.

Judy tells everyone: Frank, Rocky, Stink, the whole bus, her parents, and even Jessica by phone. By the next morning, Judy's school, Virginia Dare School, buzzes with the news. Before the students can ask, Mr. Todd announces that he and Ms. Tater are engaged, and the entire class is invited to the wedding. Frank, Rocky, and Jessica confirm that Judy predicted it. When Mr. Todd asks how she knew, Judy reflects on all her methods but realizes the real answer is simpler: She observed how Mr. Todd smiled around Ms. Tater and how Ms. Tater's eyes lit up talking about the Pumpkin Moon crayon. She tells Mr. Todd her method is "a secret."

At home, Judy puts on her mood ring. It turns black at first, then changes to purple, Purple Mountain Majesty, meaning Joyful, On Top of the World, for the very first time. Judy writes a list of plans in her journal: spell "tortilla" and "zigzag" correctly, write a book, paint her room Purple Mountain Majesty, dress up for a wedding, and become a doctor. She knows there will be many more moods to come.