Hi All! It’s been a couple weeks but I’m back for Throwback Thursday. This week were are looking at the Fudge Series. I remember reading this series in elementary school, so I was thrilled when Barnes and Noble offered one of the books in the series as an incentive for summer reading. I loved them back then so I was curious to see how they have aged and whether my kids could relate. (The book titles and book covers contain affiliate links)
This series contains five books, written by Judy Blume: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Superfudge, Fudge-a-Mania, and Double Fudge.
These books are realistic middle-grade fiction about Peter Hatcher and his brother Farely Drexel who is nicknamed Fudge. In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing we meet nine-year-old Peter who has to deal with his two-and-a-half-year-old brother, Fudge. Fudge is constantly getting into hilarious scrapes much to Peter’s chagrin. Fudge seems to get away with all of his antics – unpunished -including swallowing Peter’s turtle. This is a classic story about sibling rivalry, so imagine Peter’s reaction when he learns that his mother is going to have another baby! But those fears seem to be waylaid when Peter’s parents get him a dog to make up for the death of his turtle.
The second book in the Fudge series – Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great – takes a break from the Hatcher family to focus on Sheila Tubman – one of the characters in the first book. In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Sheila comes across as a snobby know-it-all but that is a cover for all of her insecurities. We learn that Sheila is full of phobias including the fear of spiders, dogs, and water. When her family goes away to Upstate, NY for the summer, Sheila is forced to attend summer camp where she has to face her fear of swimming and go dogs. Sheila thinks she has successfully hidden all of her fears until a SLAM book at a sleepover shows her otherwise. We find out that Sheila and her friends make amends and that ultimately Sheila faces her fears. Shelia also gets a dog at the end of this book.
The third book, Superfudge, finds the Hatcher family moving to Princeton. NJ where baby Tamara Roxanne is born. Nicknamed Tootsie, Fudge is super jealous of his baby sister and covers her with stamps to try to mail her away. Peter is left to deal with the fallout of Fudge’s school antics – including a teacher who refuses to call him Fudge. Peter finds that he likes his sister better than he thought he would, makes new friends at a new school , and develops a mild crush on a girl. It definitely should be noted that this book outs Santa! So, if your children are believers, you might want to think twice about letting your child read this book on their own or if you are reading it out loud you might want to skip that part. But in the end Santa brings Tootsie a dog. Okay, well that doesn’t really happen – not every book ends with someone getting a dog. I just wanted too see if you were paying attention!
In book four, Fudge-a-Mania, we find Peter dealing with his nemesis, Sheila Tubman. It’s not bad enough that Fudge – who is as big of a whirl-wind as ever – has declared that he is going to marry Sheila but Peter finds himself on vacation and sharing a house with Sheila and her family. What’s worse is that Peter’ s grandmother and Sheila’s grandfather fall in love and get married making Sheila and Peter step-cousins. This book is filled with the usual hijinks you would expect from Fudge.
The final book in this series, Double Fudge, brings us full circle. The Hatchers invite long lost family to move into their small apartment because they don’t have anywhere else to stay. Ironically – and suspending belief just a little – the new family also has a son named Farley Drexel, who Fudge nicknames Mini. Fudge has become obsessed with money and hatches a plan to buy Manhattan with his earnings from the tooth fairy. But his plan is foiled when Mini eats Fudge’s tooth. As I said, the book comes full-circle because Fudge realizes how upset Peter was when Fudge swallowed his turtle. The bothers reconcile, and at the close of the series, they seem to understand each other just a little better.
The first book was originally published in 1972 so some of the cultural references have been updated to make it more accessible to kids today including changing Peter’s Christmas list from a stero and record albums to a CD player and laptop. I think these books with their themes of sibling rivalry, family, and friendship have withstood the test of time. I hope you enjoy them as much as my kids and I did!
Drop a comment if you read these books or if you have any favorite books from your childhood that you would like me to include in Throwback Thursday.
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