Pssst. Pssst. When Judy got to school the next morning, her friends (minus Amy, plus Jessica Finch) were whispering outside Class 3T. As soon as they saw Judy, they stopped. Since when were Rocky and Frank so palsy-walsy with Fink-Face Finch?

Oops. That wasn’t good-mood thinking. WWJFD? What Would Jessica Finch Do? Judy tried to sound cheery. “Hey, guys. Happy Thursday!”

Frank waved. Jessica smiled. Rocky gave her a strange look. “We better get inside,” he said. “Mr. Todd already blinked the lights once.”

It was so-not-working to try to be like Jessica Finch. Her friends just thought she was battier than Batgirl.

Mr. Todd had tons of alarm clocks on his desk. “Three, two, one . . . ” BZZZZZZZZ! The clocks went off. Half the class jumped. The other half held their fingers in their ears.

“It’s time!” Mr. Todd smiled brightly. “Time to Measure Up! Today we begin our new math unit. We’re going to go the distance. We’re going to have gallons of fun. All day long we’ll be measuring time and space, our classroom, and one another. Take out your math journals.”

Judy did not even have to search her desk or her backpack. She pulled out her math journal from the top of the nice neat stack inside her desk.

“What are some tools we might use to measure things with?” Mr. Todd asked.

Hannah raised her hand. “Ruler!”

Dylan raised his hand. “Yardstick!”

Jessica Finch raised her hand. “Measuring cup!”

Judy wanted to participate, just like Jessica Finch. “String!” Judy called out.

“Judy? Did you forget to raise your hand?” asked Mr. Todd.

Oof. Judy stretched her hand in the air.

“Yes?” asked Mr. Todd.

“I was going to say Elizabeth Blackwell Women of Science ruler,” said Judy, holding up her favorite ruler. “But somebody said ruler. So, I was thinking, you could measure something with a piece of string.”

“Very good,” said Mr. Todd. “In ancient times, the length of your foot or the width of your thumb could be used to measure things.”

Judy stuck her hand in the air again. “Mr. Todd,” she started, with her hand still raised. “Did you know that the longest guitar is thirty-eight feet and two inches? It says so right here on my Yardstick of Bubble Gum box.”

“Thank you, Judy. That’s interesting.” He rolled the chalk in his hands. “But let’s try not to interrupt.”

“I raised my hand!” said Judy.

“That’s a good start. But please wait to be called on.” Mr. Todd held up a jar of something that looked like rice. He wrote on the board: 1 inch = 3 grains of barley.

Judy raised her hand again. Mr. Todd peered over his glasses. “Yes, Judy?”

“The longest grain of rice is eight and a half millimeters, I’m pretty sure.”

“She’s like the Interrupting Chicken from that book,” said Brody.

Judy’s face got hot. Her ears turned as red as a turtle. A red-eared slider, that is.

“Let’s all work on not interrupting, Brody,” said Mr. Todd. He turned back to the board. “In old England, the king made a rule that if you took three grains of barley and put them end to end, that made an inch.”

Judy could not help thinking about the world’s longest roller coaster and the world’s longest mustache. She could not help thinking about the world’s longest sand castle and the world’s longest banana split. She could not help wondering if the Yardstick of Bubble Gum was the world’s longest piece of bubble gum.

Judy shivered. She felt a chill. Probably the cold wind blowing in from the back of the room. Antarctica.

Snotsicles!

Judy sat on her hands. She did not want to be an Interrupting Chicken. And she did not want to take a zip, a trip, or a skidoo to the Land of Snow and Ice, where her only friends would be nematodes.

At last, Class 3T got up and out of their seats. They scribbled estimates in their journals. They measured the room in human feet. They measured Mr. Todd’s desk in thumbs. They measured their pencils in grains of barley.

“My pencil is twenty-two and a half barleys,” said Frank, “counting the eraser.” Class 3T figured out that Frank’s pencil was almost seven and a half inches.

They measured the length of Peanut the guinea pig, the distance from the pencil sharpener to the window, and the time it took to walk-not-run from Class 3T to the principal’s office and back.

They learned some way-cool measurements:

George Washington’s nose on Mount Rushmore: 20 feet long

Statue of Liberty torch: 12 feet 7 inches long

Chesapeake Bay Bridge: 92,928 feet long

They found out that the United States was 3,000 miles long and the distance from the earth to the sun was nearly 93 million miles!

“Great job today, class,” said Mr. Todd. “Tomorrow we’ll measure things in hands, cubits, and licks.”

Judy raised her hand. She waited for Mr. Todd to call on her. “Licks? Does that mean we get to eat ice cream?” she asked.

Mr. Todd chuckled. “I’m afraid not. A lick is the distance from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your index finger when they’re spread out like an L.”

Judy’s pencil was two and a quarter licks. Her Women of Science ruler was four licks. Her Yardstick of Bubble Gum box was twelve licks.

“Over the weekend, think of something you’d like to measure, and come up with a unique way to measure it. On Monday, we’re going to make our own rulers.”

Rocky was going to measure his iguana, Houdini, using a deck of cards. Frank was going to measure his breakfast waffles in forks. Jessica Finch was going to measure the Ultimate Speller’s Dictionary in Magic Straws.

“How about you, Judy? You’re being awful quiet,” said Frank.

Judy itched. A bad-mood twitch. Remembering to raise her hand and not speak out in class and be like Jessica Finch all the time was making her jumpy. Trying to be in a good mood all the time was making her grumpy.

But she could not be a grumpa-lumpa-gus if she wanted to stay away from Antarctica. So she made a joke. “I’m going to measure my spaceship. You know, the one I flew in on with the Pod People from outer space.”

Everybody half laughed.

“Kidding!” said Judy. “I’ll probably measure Stink using sugar packets.”

By the time Judy got home, she was in a tizzy. Her hair was in a frizzy and her brain was dizzy with bad-mood thoughts. Grr. She, Judy Moody, was in an almost mood. She checked her mood ring. It was awful dark under there, where the purple nail polish was chipping off.

Judy had a heart-to-heart with Mouse. “This being in a good mood all the time sure is hard, Mouse. And my friends think I’m some kind of weirdo. I should just give up right now. Nobody would even know.”

Mouse hid her eyes behind her paw. “You’re right, Mouse. I’d know.”

Mouse sniffled. Mouse sneezed. “I know, I know, Mouse. If I quit now, I might as well move to Antarctica and live on an iceberg.”

Judy picked up a ball of dark blue yarn. Knit, knit, knit. Loop-de-loop-de-loop. At least she had yarn to knit with again, thanks to her so-called not-alien friends. Her chain of finger knitting was getting longer and longer. It went down the stairs and around the banister and over the coat tree and into the living room, where it wound its way around the legs of the couch.

The dark-blue ball of yarn was used up in no time. Judy climbed up to her top bunk with a ball of purply yarn. She cast off of her thumb.

Soon a lacy purple chain piled up in her lap. Purple. The color of kings and queens and creative ones. The color of a mood ring painted Joyful.

Purple always put Judy in a better mood.

Suddenly, she had an idea. A royal idea. A plum of an idea. A lilac-lavender-NOT-eggplant idea. Peanut Butter and Jelly! She, Judy Moody, would paint her same old chicken-pox polka-dot wall purple. That way, at least her room would be in a good mood all the time. All she had to do now was ask the You-Know-Whos.

Judy found Mom downstairs playing Words With Frenemies on the computer. Dad was helping Stink with homework.

“Mom! Dad!” Judy begged. She got down on her knees. “Please say yes. Pretty please with peanut-butter fingers on top?”

“Don’t say yes,” said Stink. “I bet she’s going to ask you to take her to Fur & Fangs to get an Australian sugar glider or something.”

“Or something,” said Judy. “What even is a sugar glider?”

“It’s like a flying squirrel with big bulgy eyes. From Australia. You can have one as a pet as long as you don’t live in a four-syllable state.”

“Huh?”

“You know. California, New Mexico, Massachusetts, and parts of Minnesota.”

“Weird,” said Judy.

“Well, we’re not getting a flying sugar glider,” said Mom. “Or any other Australian marsupial. So if that is the question, the answer is no.”

“I’m not even asking for a sugar glider,” said Judy.

“We’re not going to say yes or no until we hear the question,” said Dad.

“I was going to ask if we could paint my room. Maybe the wall behind my bunk bed? I was thinking purple.”

“Why not?” said Mom.

“Sure,” said Dad. “I have a bunch of color samples in the garage. You pick out a color, and we’ll do it this weekend.”

“Really? So that’s a yes?” Judy asked. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” said Dad.

“You should have gone for the flying sugar glider,” said Stink.