Superfudge Read online

  You haven’t seen anything yet!

  Fudge put the worm on his arm and let it crawl up to his shoulder. “See . . . isn’t he cute? I’m going to call him Willy. Willy Worm. And he’ll be my very own pet. I’m going to sleep with him, and he can eat next to me at the table, and he’ll take a bath with me. . . .”

  “Fudge!”

  “Yes, Mommy?”

  “I told you, I don’t ever want to see that worm again. And you may not bring him into the house. And you may not hold him that close to Tootsie. Do you understand this time?”

  “You really don’t like worms?” Fudge said.

  “That’s right,” Mom said. “I really don’t.”

  “Why not?” Fudge asked.

  “It’s nothing I can explain.” Mom went back to weeding the garden. Fudge followed her.

  “Is your family always like that?” Alex asked.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet!” I told him.

  “Superfudge is a genuinely funny story . . . dealing with the kinks and knots of modern family life. . . . Its various scenes are as pure as the youngsters who animate them.” —The New York Times

  “This is Judy Blume at her best—funny, contemporary, with just the right pace and sound of how children talk to each other . . . a winner. . . .” —The San Diego Union

  “. . . a hilarious fast-paced story . . .” —The St. Petersburg Times

  BOOKS BY JUDY BLUME

  The Pain and the Great One

  Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One

  Cool Zone with the Pain and the Great One

  Going, Going, Gone! with the Pain and the Great One

  Friend or Fiend? with the Pain and the Great One

  The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo

  Freckle Juice

  THE FUDGE BOOKS

  Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

  Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great

  Superfudge

  Fudge-a-Mania

  Double Fudge

  Blubber

  Iggie’s House

  Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

  Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret

  It’s Not the End of the World

  Then Again, Maybe I Won’t

  Deenie

  Just as Long as We’re Together

  Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson

  Tiger Eyes

  Forever

  Letters to Judy

  Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers (edited by Judy Blume)

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books,1980

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2003

  Reissued by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Judy Blume, 1980

  Illustration copyright © Jules Feiffer, 2007

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Blume, Judy.

  Superfudge / by Judy Blume.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Peter describes the highs and lows of life with his younger brother Fudge.

  ISBN: 9781101564097

  [1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Family life—Fiction. 3. Humorous stories.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.B6265 Su 1980 [Fic]—19 80-010439 CIP

  This Puffin edition ISBN 978-0-14-240880-3

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  For Larry,

  without whom there would be no Fudge, and for all my readers who have asked for another book about him

  Acknowledgments

  The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the quoted passages on:

  pages 83 and 85, from “Toot, Toot, Tootsie! Good-bye” by Gus Kahn, Ernie Erdman and Ted Fiorito. Copyright © 1922, renewed 1950 Leo Feist, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  page 97, from One fish two fish red fish blue fish by Dr. Seuss. © Copyright 1960 by Dr. Seuss. Published in New York by Beginner Books, Inc., a division of Random House, Inc.

  page 97, from Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. © Copyright 1960 by Dr. Seuss. Published in New York by Beginner Books, Inc., a division of Random House, Inc.

  pages 131 and 132, from the Superman property. The two quotes are from the Superman property and are trademarks of DC Comics Inc. © 1938. Used by permission.

  page 140, from “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” words by Haven Gillespie and music by J. Fred Coots. Copyright © 1934, renewed 1962 Leo Feist, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Contents

  Guess What, Peter?

  Cutchie-Cutchie-Coo

  Another Something Wonderful

  Off the Wall

  Small Ones Are Sweeter

  Farley Drexel Meets Rat Face

  A Very Cultured Bird

  Naturally Fortified

  Superfudge

  Santa Who?

  Catastrophes

  Tootsie Speaks Out

  1

  Guess What, Peter?

  Life was going along okay when my mother and father dropped the news. Bam! Just like that.

  “We have something wonderful to tell you, Peter,” Mom said before dinner. She was slicing carrots into the salad bowl. I grabbed one.

  “What is it?” I asked. I figured maybe my father’s been made president of the company. Or maybe my teacher phoned, saying that even though I don’t get the best grades in the fifth grade, I am definitely the smartest kid in the class.

  “We’re going to have a baby,” Mom said.

  “We’re going to what?” I asked, starting to choke. Dad had to whack me on the back. Tiny pieces of chewed up carrot flew out of my mouth and hit the counter. Mom wiped them up with a sponge.

  “Have a baby,” Dad said.

  “You mean you’re pregnant?” I asked Mom.

  “That’s right,” she told me, patting her middle. “Almost four months.”

  “Four months! You’ve known for four months and you didn’t tell me?”

  “We wanted to be sure,” Dad said.

  “It took you four months to be sure?”

  “I saw the doctor for the
second time today,” Mom said. “The baby’s due in February.” She reached over and tried to tousle my hair. I ducked and got out of the way before she could touch me.

  Dad took the lid off the pot on the stove and stirred up the stew. Mom went back to slicing carrots. You’d have thought we were discussing the weather.

  “How could you?” I shouted. “How could you? Isn’t one enough?”

  They both stopped and looked at me.

  I kept right on shouting. “Another Fudge! Just what this family needs.” I turned and stormed down the hall.

  Fudge, my four-year-old brother, was in the living room. He was shoving crackers into his mouth and laughing like a loon at Sesame Street on TV. I looked at him and thought about having to go through it all over again. The kicking and the screaming and the messes and more—much more. I felt so angry that I kicked the wall.

  Fudge turned. “Hi, Pee-tah,” he said.

  “You are the biggest pain ever invented!” I yelled.

  He tossed a handful of crackers at me.

  I raced to my room and slammed the door, so hard my map of the world fell off the wall and landed on the bed. My dog, Turtle, barked. I opened the door just enough to let him squeeze through, then slammed it shut again. I pulled my Adidas bag out of the closet and emptied two dresser drawers into it. Another Fudge, I said to myself. They’re going to have another Fudge.

  There was a knock at my door, and Dad called, “Peter . . .”

  “Go away,” I told him.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” he said.

  “About what?” As if I didn’t know.

  “The baby.”

  “What baby?”

  “You know what baby!”

  “We don’t need another baby.”

  “Need it or not, it’s coming,” Dad said. “So you might as well get used to the idea.”

  “Never!”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Dad said. “In the meantime, scrub up. It’s time for dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I zipped up my bag, grabbed a jacket and opened my bedroom door. No one was there. I marched down the hall and found my parents in the kitchen.

  “I’m leaving,” I announced. “I’m not going to hang around waiting for another Fudge to get born. Good-bye.”

  I didn’t move. I just stood there, waiting to see what they’d do next.

  “Where are you going?” Mom asked. She took four plates out of the cabinet and handed them to Dad.

  “To Jimmy Fargo’s,” I said, although until that moment I hadn’t thought at all about where I would go.

  “They have a one-bedroom apartment,” Mom said. “You’d be very crowded.”

  “Then I’ll go to Grandma’s. She’ll be happy to have me.”

  “Grandma’s in Boston for the week, visiting Aunt Linda.”

  “Oh.”

  “So why don’t you scrub up and have your dinner, and then you can decide where to go,” Mom said.

  I didn’t want to admit that I was hungry, but I was. And all those good smells coming from the pots and pans on the stove were making my mouth water. So I dropped my Adidas bag and went down the hall to the bathroom.

  Fudge was at the sink. He stood on his stool, lathering his hands with three inches of suds. “Hello, you must be Bert,” he said in his best Sesame Street voice. “My name is Ernie. Glad to meet you.” He offered me one of his sudsy little hands.

  “Roll up your sleeves,” I told him. “You’re making a mess.”

  “Mess, mess . . . I love to make a mess,” he sang.

  “We know . . . we know,” I told him.

  I ran my hands under the faucet and dried them on my jeans.

  When we got to the table, Fudge arranged himself in his chair. Since he refuses to sit in his booster seat, he has to kneel so that he can reach his place at the table. “Pee-tah didn’t scrub,” he said. “He only rinsed.”

  “You little . . .” I started to say, but Fudge was already yapping away to my father.

  “Hello, I’m Bert. You must be Ernie.”

  “That’s right,” my father said, playing along with him. “How are you, Bert?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Fudge said. “My liver’s turning green and my toenails are falling off.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Bert,” my father said. “Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.”

  “Yes, maybe,” Fudge said.

  I shook my head and piled some mashed potatoes on my plate. Then I drowned them in gravy. “Remember when we took Fudge to Hamburger Heaven,” I said, “and he smeared the mashed potatoes all over the wall?”

  “I did that?” Fudge asked, suddenly interested.

  “Yes,” I told him, “and you dumped a plate of peas on your head too.”

  My mother started to laugh. “I’d forgotten all about that day.”

  “Too bad you didn’t remember before you decided to have another baby,” I said.

  “Baby?” Fudge asked.

  My mother and father looked at each other. I got the message. They hadn’t told Fudge the good news yet.

  “Yes,” Mom said. “We’re going to have a baby.”

  “Tomorrow?” Fudge asked.

  “No, not tomorrow,” Mom said.

  “When?” Fudge asked.

  “February,” Dad said.

  “January, February, March, April, May, June, July . . .” Fudge recited.

  “Okay . . . okay . . .” I said. “We all know how smart you are.”

  “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty . . .”

  “Enough!” I said.

  “A, B, C, D, E, F, G, R, B, Y, Z . . .”

  “Will somebody turn him off?” I said.

  Fudge was quiet for a few minutes. Then he said, “What kind of new baby will it be?”

  “Let’s hope it’s not like you,” I said.

  “Why not? I was a good baby, wasn’t I, Mommy?”

  “You were an interesting baby, Fudgie,” Mom said.

  “See, I was an interesting baby,” he said to me.

  “And Peter was a sweet baby,” Mom said. “He was very quiet.”

  “Lucky you had me first,” I said to Mom, “or you might not have had any more kids.”

  “Was I a quiet baby, too?” Fudge asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Dad said.

  “I want to see the baby,” Fudge said.

  “You will.”

  “Now!”

  “You can’t see it now,” Dad said.

  “Why not?” Fudge asked.

  “Because it’s inside me,” Mom told him.

  Here it comes, I thought, the big question. When I asked it, I got a book called How Babies Are Made. I wondered what Mom and Dad would say to Fudge. But Fudge didn’t ask. Instead, he banged his spoon against his plate and howled. “I want to see the baby. I want to see the baby now!”

  “You’ll have to wait until February,” Dad said, “just like the rest of us.”

  “Now now now!” Fudge screamed.

  Another five years of this, I thought. Maybe even more. And who’s to say that they aren’t going to keep on having babies, one after the other. “Excuse me,” I said, getting up from the table. I went into the kitchen and grabbed my Adidas bag. Then I stood in the doorway and called, “Well, I’d better be on my way.” I sort of waved good-bye.

  “Where is Pee-tah going?” Fudge asked.

  “I’m running away,” I told him. “But I’ll come back to visit. Someday.”

  “No, Pee-tah . . . don’t go!” Fudge jumped off his chair and ran to me. He grabbed my leg and started bawling. “Pee-tah . . . Pee-tah . . . take me with you.”

  I tried to shake him off my leg but I couldn’t. He can be really strong. I looked at my mother and father. Then I looked down at Fudge, who gave me the same look as Turtle when he’s begging for a biscuit. “If only I knew for sure what the baby would be like,” I said.

  “Take a chance, Peter,” Dad said. “The baby won’t
necessarily be anything like Fudge.”

  “But it won’t necessarily not be like him either,” I answered.

  Fudge tugged at my leg. “I want an interesting baby,” he said. “Like me.”

  I sighed. “If you think it’s going to sleep in my room, you’re crazy,” I told Mom and Dad.

  “The baby will sleep in here,” Mom said. “In the dining area.”

  “Then where will we eat?”

  “Oh, we’ll think of something,” Mom said.

  I put my Adidas bag down and tried shaking Fudge off one more time. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll stay for now. But when the baby comes, if I don’t like it, I’m leaving.”

  “Me too,” Fudge said. “Sam got a new baby and it smells.” He held his nose. “P.U.”

  “Who wants dessert?” Dad asked. “It’s vanilla pudding.”

  “I do . . . I do . . .” Fudge yelped. He let go of me and climbed into his chair.

  “Peter?” Dad said.

  “Sure, why not?” And I sat down at the table too.

  Mom reached over and tousled my hair. This time I let her.

  2

  Cutchie-Cutchie-Coo

  Before the end of the week, Fudge asked the big question. “How did the baby get inside you, Mommy?” So Mom borrowed my copy of How Babies Are Made, and she read it to Fudge.

  As soon as he had the facts straight, he was telling anybody and everybody exactly how Mom and Dad had made the baby. He told Henry, our elevator operator. Henry smiled and said, “That’s a mouthful for a small fry like you.”

  He told the checker at the supermarket. Her eyes got bigger and bigger until Mom said, “That’s enough, Fudgie.”

  “But I’m just getting to the good part,” Fudge said.

  “Peter,” Mom said, “it’s getting very warm in here. Why don’t you take Fudge outside?”

  He saw a pregnant woman on the bus and said, “I know what’s growing inside you, and I know how it got there too.” The woman got up and changed her seat.

  He told Grandma. She said to my mother, “Anne, do you think it’s wise for him to know so much? In my days we talked about the stork.”