Taking a Break with the Bard! Stink--Hamlet and Cheese by Megan McDonald

It's school break time, and Stink has a choice to make. Shall he hang around the house all week and listen to his big sister Judy Moody babble about how superior she is, or go over to his friend Sophie's house and see what she's got planned for the week. It's an easy decision. Sophie's just got her latest yard-sale finds, including one unusual action figure:

"Here's the best one." She held up a balding guy with a big collar and puffy pumpkin pants.< "Hey!" said Stink. "Isn't that... ? It's William Shakesbeard!"
Sophie cracked up. "Close! It's William Shakespeare. I can't wait for Shakespeare camp. It's called Shakespeare Sprites." "You get to drink soda at camp?" asked Stink.

Sophie explains that a sprite is like a fairy, and that everyone in the group gets a part. And, Sophie points out, there are some other perks Stink might enjoy about the camp.

"Everybody gets a speaking part. Also, there's mad kings and murders and storms and shipwrecks and sword fights in Shakespeare. Oh, and I almost forgot the best part!"Sophie added. "At Shakespeare camp, you get to swear like people did in Shakespeare's time."

Swords AND swearing? Stink is sold! He signs up for the camp. He's unhappy about being the only boy there, but happy that that means that he gets to do most of the swearing and sword fighting and play Hamlet, with his own fake mustache and pumpkin-shaped shorts. But Fie! There be one fly in ye olde ointment! Stink's nemesis Riley Rottenberger is there, still determined to kiss him and embarrass him in front of a live audience. Riley even has a Shakespearean knock-knock kissing joke awaiting Stink!

"Knock Knock" "Who's there?" "Puck." "Puck Who?" "Pucker up, Stink!" Riley puckered up her lips! MWAH!
"Fie on thee, fly-faced maggot pie!"

But "All's well that ends well," and with a dose of "eye of newt and toe of frog" Stink manages to elude a Riley Rottenberger smoocharooney, tosses off some erudite Elizabethan swearing, and his Hamlet death scene brings down the house at the camp finale, in Megan McDonald's Stink: Hamlet and Cheese (Candlewick Books, 2019 ed.) With the comely comedic artwork of Peter H. Reynolds, young independent readers will find much merry-making indeed as Stink Moody treads the boards, hits the histrionic heights, and bests the Bard in another of of McDonald's novels packed with laughs and lower grade humor that will have the pages turning fast in the beginning chapter book for Judy and Stink Moody fans.