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| ISBN-13: | 9780142408780 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Young Readers Group |
| Publication date: | 04/05/2007 |
| Series: | Fudge Series |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 49,361 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.13(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.62(d) |
| Lexile: | 530L (what's this?) |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
Hometown:
New York's Upper East Side, Key West, and Martha's VineyardDate of Birth:
February 12, 1938Place of Birth:
Elizabeth, New JerseyEducation:
B.S. in education, New York University, 1961Website:
http://www.judyblume.com/
Chapter 1
The Miser
When my brother Fudge was five, he discovered money in a big way. "Hey, Pete," he said one night as I was getting out of the shower. "How much would it cost to buy New York?"
"The city or the state?" I asked, as if it were a serious question.
"Which is bigger?"
"The state, but all the good stuff is in the city." People who don’t live in the city might disagree, but I’m a city kind of guy.
"We live in the city, right?" Fudge said. He was sitting on the open toilet seat in his pajamas.
"You’re not doing anything, are you?" I asked as I toweled myself dry.
"What do you mean, Pete?"
"I mean you’re sitting on the toilet, and you haven’t pulled down your pj’s."
He swung his feet and started laughing. "Don’t worry, Pete. Only Tootsie still poops in her pants." Tootsie is our little sister. She’ll be two in February.
Fudge watched as I combed my wet hair. "Are you going someplace?" he asked.
"Yeah, to bed." I got into clean boxers and pulled a T-shirt over my head.
"Then how come you’re getting dressed?"
"I’m not getting dressed. Starting tonight, this is what I wear instead of pajamas. And how come you’re still up?"
"I can’t go to sleep until you tell me, Pete."
"Tell you what?"
"How much it would cost to buy New York City."
"Well, the Dutch paid about twenty-four dollars for it back in the sixteen hundreds."
"Twenty-four dollars?" His eyes opened wide. "That’s all?"
"Yeah, it was a real bargain. But don’t get your hopes up. That’s not what it would cost today, even if it were for sale, which it’s not."
"How do you know, Pete?"
"Believe me, I know!"
"But how?"
"Listen, Fudge . . . by the time you’re twelve there’s a lot of stuff you know, and you don’t even know how you know it."
He repeated my line. "There’s a lot of stuff you know and you don’t even know how you know it!" Then he laughed like crazy. "That’s a tongue twister, Pete."
"No, that’s just the truth, Fudge."
The next day he was at it again. In the elevator he asked Sheila Tubman, "How much money do you have, Sheila?"
"That’s not a polite question, Fudgie," she told him. "Nice people don’t talk about their money, especially in these times." Sheila gave me a look like it was my fault my brother has no manners. I hope she’s not in my class this year. I hope that every year, and every year she’s there, like some kind of itch you can’t get rid of, no matter how hard you scratch.
"I’m nice," Fudge said, "and I like to talk about money. You want to know how much I have?"
"No," Sheila told him. "It’s nobody’s business but yours."
He told her anyway. I knew he would. "I have fourteen dollars and seventy-four cents. I mise my money every night before I go to sleep."
"You mise your money?" Sheila asked. Then she shook her head at me like it’s my fault he thinks mise is a word.
Henry, who runs the elevator in our building, laughed. "Nothing like having a miser in the family."
"You don’t have to be a miser, Fudge," Sheila said. "If you like counting money so much, you can work at a bank when you grow up."
"Yeah," Fudge said. "I can work at a bank and mise my money all day long."
Sheila sighed. "He doesn’t get it," she said to me.
"He’s only Þve," I reminded her.
"Almost six," he reminded me. Then he tugged Sheila’s arm. "Hey, Sheila . . . you know how much the Dude paid for New York City?"
"The Dude?" Sheila asked. "Is this some kind of joke?"
"Not the Dude," I told Fudge. "The Dutch."
"His name was Peter Minuit," Sheila said, like the know-it-all she is. "And he paid the Wappinger Indian tribe in trinkets, not cash. Besides, the Indians thought they were going to share the land, not sell it."
"Sharing is good," Fudge said. "Except for money. I’ll never share my money. My money is all mine. I love my money!"
"That’s a disgusting thing to say," Sheila told him. "You’re not going to have any friends if you talk that way."
By then the elevator reached the lobby. "Your brother has no values," Sheila said as we walked to the door of our building. Outside, she turned and headed toward Broadway.
"How much do values cost?" Fudge asked me.
"Not everything’s for sale," I told him.
"It should be." Then he skipped down to the corner singing, "Money, money, money . . . I love money, money, money . . ."
That’s when I knew we were in big trouble.
"It’s just a stage," Mom told me later when I pointed out that Fudge is obsessed by money.
"Maybe, but it’s still embarrassing," I said. "You better do something before school starts."
But Mom didn’t take me seriously until that night at dinner when Dad said, "Please pass the salt, Fudge."
"How much will you give me for it?" Fudge asked. The saltshaker was sitting right in front of him.
"Excuse me," Dad said. "I’m asking for a favor, not hiring someone to do a job."
"If you hire me I’ll pass the salt," Fudge said. "How about a dollar?"
"How about nothing?" I said, reaching for the salt and passing it to Dad.
"No fair, Pete!" Fudge shouted. "He asked me, not you."
"Thank you, Peter," Dad said and he and Mom shared a look.
"I told you, didn’t I?" I said to them. "I told you we have a big problem."
"What problem?" Fudge asked.
"You!" I said.
"Foo!" Tootsie said from her baby seat, as she threw a handful of rice across the table.
"What’s the difference between dollars and bucks?" Fudge asked the next morning at breakfast. He was drawing dollar signs all over the Cheerios box with a red marker.
"Bucks is just another word for dollars," Mom told him, moving the cereal box out of his reach.
"Nobody says bucks anymore," I said. "Where’d you hear about bucks?"
"Grandma was reading me a story and the guy called his money bucks," Fudge said. "He had Þve bucks and he thought that was a lot. Is that funny or what?" He shoveled a handful of dry Cheerios into his mouth, then washed them down with a swig of milk. He refuses to mix his cereal and milk in a bowl like everyone else.
"Five dollars is nothing to sneeze at," Dad said, carrying Tootsie into the kitchen. "I remember saving for a model airplane that cost four dollars and ninety-nine cents, and in those days that was a lot." Dad sat Tootsie in her baby seat and doled out some Cheerios for her. "Somebody’s been decorating the cereal box," he said.
"Yeah . . . the miser’s learned to draw dollar signs," I said.
It wasn’t long before the miser started making his own money. "Fudge Bucks," he told us. "I’m going to make a hundred million trillion of them." And just like that, with one box of markers and a pack of colored paper, he was on his way. "Soon I’ll have enough Fudge Bucks to buy the whole world."
"Why don’t you start with something smaller,"
"Good idea, Pete. I’ll start with Toys ‘R’ Us."
"The kid has no values," I told my parents after Fudge went to bed. They looked at me like I was some kind of crazy. "Well, he doesn’t," I said. "He worships money."
"I wouldn’t go that far," Dad said. "It’s not unusual for young children to want things."
"I want things, too," I reminded Dad. "But I don’t go around obsessing about money."
"It’s just a phase," Mom said this time.
We could hear Fudge as he started to sing, "Oh, money, money, money . . . I love money, money,
As soon as he stopped, Uncle Feather, his myna bird, started. "Ooooo, money, money, money . . ."
Turtle, my dog, lifted his head and howled. He thinks he can sing.
Dad called, "Fudge . . . cover Uncle Feather’s cage and get to sleep."
"Uncle Feather’s mising his money," Fudge called back. "He’s not ready to go to sleep."
"How did this happen to us?" Mom asked. "We’ve always worked hard. We spend carefully. And we never talk about money in front of the children."
"Maybe that’s the problem," I told them.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Double Fudge"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Judy Blume.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Young Readers Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
"Judy Blume has a knack for knowing what children think about."—New York Times
"A fun story with interesting characters." —School Library Journal
Judy Blume Discusses Double Fudge
Q. So what's this book about, Judy?
A. In this one Fudge is obsessed by money. He has plans to buy Toys R Us as well as the entire city of New York. His family is so embarrassed, especially his older brother, Peter, who's starting 7th grade. Besides that, the Hatchers meet their long lost relatives, including twin cousins and their weird little brother. When Fudge discovers he's not the only Farley Drexel Hatcher in the world -- well, watch out!
Q. Let's go back to the beginning for a minute. Where did Fudge come from, anyway?
A. When I began to write, our babysitter brought me an article from the newspaper about a toddler who swallowed a tiny pet turtle. This was in the late sixties, when you could still buy turtles for pets. I was intrigued by the possibilities and scribbled out a story for a picture book the next day. I called it "Peter, Fudge and Dribble." I submitted my manuscript to several publishers but they all rejected it. Two editors wrote personal notes saying they found the story very funny but one was concerned that it could lead to small children swallowing turtles, and the other found it too unbelievable to publish.
Q. What did you do (aside from going into your closet for a good cry)?
A. A few years later, my first agent submitted the story to Ann Durell, editor of children's books at E.P. Dutton. Ann invited me to lunch. I was so nervous I could hardly eat but she was so warm and friendly I finally relaxed. Ann liked my story but she suggested, instead of a picture book, I consider writing a chapter book about the Hatcher family, using "Peter, Fudge and Dribble" as one of the chapters.
Q. How did you feel about that?
A. I loved her idea and went home fired up and ready to write. That summer I wrote the book, loosely basing the character of Fudge on my son, Larry, when he was a toddler. I set the book in New York City, in the building where my best friend, Mary, lived with her family. I changed the address but the elevator I describe in the book with its mirrored wall and upholstered bench is exactly as it was, and still is, in Mary's building.
I proudly sent the finished manuscript to my agent but after reading it she said, "I don't think this is anything like what Ann had in mind." I was stunned and asked her to show it to Ann anyway. She did and Ann offered to publish it just as it was (I think it was the only book I ever wrote that I didn't revise over and over). I was ecstatic.
Q. Did you plan to write a series of Fudge books?
A. No, absolutely not! When I finished writing Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing in 1972, I sat right down and decided that Sheila Tubman, Peter Hatcher's nemesis, deserved her own book. So I wrote Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great but I never expected to write about any of the characters again.
Q. What changed your mind?
A. My readers. Over the years I received thousands of letters from children begging for another Fudge book. Eventually I decided that if I got the right idea I'd give it a try. Then one day when I was in the shower an idea popped into my head. (The shower is a good place for ideas!) It seemed like such a simple idea I couldn't believe it had taken eight years to come to me. I would give the Hatchers a new baby and move them out of the city for a school year. I sat down and began to write the book that became Superfudge. And that was it!
Q. But that wasn't it?
A. This is getting embarrassing. No -- that wasn't it. My readers still wouldn't let Fudge go. So I thought, Okay -- if I get an idea I'll do one more book. This idea came to me about ten years later, during a summer vacation in Maine. I knew it the moment we pulled up to the old house we'd rented. This time I'd reunite all of the characters from the previous Fudge books and send them to Maine for a summer vacation. Then I'd never have to write about them again. That book became Fudge-a-Mania.
Q. Since you never expected to write another Fudge book...
A. I know, I know. But then I had a grandson and guess which character of mine became his favorite? You got it! When Elliot was younger (he's almost 11 now) we used to play "The Fudge Game," a game he invented where I had to play the part of Fudge and he got to be Peter, the older brother. This game drove everyone in the family crazy except Elliot. He kept asking for another book about Fudge. I told him, When and if I ever get another idea.... I feel really lucky that just when I least expected it, an idea came to me.
Q. So this time he's the inspiration?
A. Yes. When he was small he believed that all you had to do to get money, was put a card into a machine and money would come pouring out. At the time, he also loved to look in catalogs and make X's beside all of the things he wanted for future birthdays and holidays. Of course, Double Fudge is dedicated to him.
Q. How long does it usually take to write a Fudge book?
A. The thing about funny books is, they have to spill out spontaneously, or they don't work (at least that's how it is with me). Unlike a novel, which can take me three years and up to 20 drafts, Fudge books either come or they don't. Maybe that's also why I write so few of them. But, you know, it could be that I need to be away from the characters for a long time before I get the itch to revisit them. I'm a person who thrives on changes. I could never write about the same characters over and over. But with ten years in between...
Q. So, should we expect another Fudge book any time soon or will we have to wait another 10 years?
A. Please! At the end of writing every book I think, I'm never doing this again! But when it's published and I sniff the pages (something I did as a pre-schooler at the public library) I'm awfully glad I did! And if the bug bites...
Q. Why do you think the Fudge books are so enduring?
A. That's a tough one for me to answer. Maybe it's that some things, like family life, never change. Also, the humor seems to be enduring. Both parents and children seem to relate to the stories. Parents enjoy reading them to their kids just as much as kids enjoy listening. Am I lucky, or what?!
Little brothers can seem like a major pain to their siblings—copying their older sisters or brothers, taking (and breaking) their stuff, embarrassing them in front of their friends, and playing the baby-of-the-family card to get out of trouble with the parents. But those younger bros do occasionally have their moments of sweetness, sincerity, helpfulness, and […]
