Listening to Stink

My children have found audiobooks. More specifically, they love Stink and the Incredible Super-Galactic Jawbreaker. It's written by Megan McDonald, who wrote the Judy Moody series, and read by Nancy Cartwright, well known as the voice of Bart Simpson.

Stink (a precocious second grade boy) speaks entirely in hyperbole, as indicated by the title. I don't know the whole story of the book because my children have banned me from the room while they listen, so sacred is the audiobook experience, but it seems to be about a giant jawbreaker that Stink buys and eats and then he gets all upset because it didn't actually break his jaw. This is a great section of the story because his mean big sister lectures him on sayings and how they don't have literal meaning, and then within a scene or two he's turned it around on her and is lecturing her

on the exact same thing. (This prompted some pointed questions from my 6-year-old son, who demanded to know how a person could get to the second grade and not know that having your jaw broken by food is impossible and painful. Funny, because the G-man didn't know this, either, until it was explained to him.) Then Stink writes a letter to the jawbreaker company in complaint and they send him free jawbreakers. Wow. Then he goes on a letter writing tear and gets tons of free stuff and then he offends his best friend. Cue the epiphany, only it's not quite as sour a medicine as that. It's clever clear through, with lots of funny language. 

We've already moved on to Stink and the World's Worst Super-

Stinky Sneakers, in which Stink goes to a museum of bad smells, all of which he can correctly identify, because of his super stink-detecting nose. And he decides to enter a monster stink contest for the world's smelliest shoes. The G-man is all over that one. He loves all things smelly.