i recently purchased a superfudge tee from out of print, which inspired me to revisit judy blume's beloved classics.
since superfudge is a sequel to tales of a fourth grade nothing, my revisit had to start there.
in tales of a fourth grade nothing, we are introduce to peter hatcher and his family, which includes his mom, dad and of course his little brother, two-year-old terror, fudge. before i go on i have to share that as a kid, fudge's antics were a little annoying, you felt bad for peter (his poor poster board for school!), but fudge was so crazy you couldn't help but like him. however, as an adult, all i could think of was how did the hatchers end up with such a horrible child! peter is well-mannered and caring kid. fudge, on the other hand, is the type of kid i give dirty looks to when i see them misbehaving. i also silently judge the parent for being a horrible and ignorant person for raising a indecent little monster that will contribute to the world's ultimate demise because only stupid people are breeding (harvey danger reference). if i was in that movie theater with fudge, would have definitely demanded my money back! but i mean fudge did have his moments, i thought it was adorable how he wanted to be a bird when he grew up and it was kind of funny how he would only eat if served like a dog.
here are some of my favorite parts. i loved when father poured fudge's dinner on his head, i viewed it bad parenting but didn't stop it from being hilarious. the story of the birthday party was too much, all i can say is that kids are a mess. also peter was right about the fat kid not needing a second helping of cake! the story of the commercial totally reminded me of the full house episode when stephanie steals the commercial from dj.
the one thing that i couldn't believe was the ending! how did fudge swallow a turtle?!?!? i mean i didn't believe until the x-ray showed it! i kept on thinking, why are they getting an ambulance there is no way he could have swallowed a turtle, but fudge did. but i mean it was the perfect ending to the book, peter gets a new dog that he names turtle and fudge lives! btw kudos to judy blume for starting and ending the book with pet turtles!
*tales of a fourth grade nothing was part of flavorpill's 50 books every parent should read to their kids.
i learned via the dedication, a lot fans asked judy blume for a sequel so she made one, superfudge.
she also did a great job of referring tales of a fourth grade nothing in this one!
in this book, the hatchers have a new edition to the family, baby tootsie (i loved how peter pointed how his siblings candy inspired names). when peter found about the baby being on the way, he freaked out! but i mean if you had fudge as a sibling you would too! aside from the baby, some new changes are that father decided to quit work and write a book and mom decided to go back to work (way to go mom! she also wanted to study art history, double way to go mom!) and the whole family moves to jersey!
of course fudge is fudge, craziness follows them to jersey. again i was outraged by some of things fudge did like playing hide-n-seek with tooties. it freaked me out to imagine him carrying an infant and hiding her in closets! and of course him kicking his first kinder teacher and calling her rat face though she was totally uptight but still
he should respect his elders!
but fudge did have some great moments. i could not get over how cute he was about the santa letter writing and then of course telling peter he only pretended for their parents. also the story of the visiting author and the picture was hilarious. and fudge's use of big vocabulary words was great too!
i also loved the new people they met in jersey, well except that annoying kid daniel. i really liked alex but primarily because of his halloween painting!! loved that he was jimmy's dad's painting anita's anger. how clever! i might have to steal that costume idea from him! i also liked mrs. muldour and her worm cookies!
and i have to add there were so many things in the book that adult me appreciated. i got the charm of their jersey home esp the bathtub thought peter hated it. also their use of the garden and growing organic! i also liked how the parents were honest with fudge about where babies come from.
all in all, two wonderful books that have stood the test of time. i loved them just as much as fourth/fifth grade me loved them!! can't wait to pick up fudge-a-mania on my next library trip!
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