5 Chopzilla

Chop Zilla

"Did Mom and Dad read the note? Are you in trouble?" Judy asked Stink. "I won't be seeing my allowance till I'm a teenager," said Stink. "AND I have to think up a new sport." Stink ran up to his room. "This is not the end of Shark Hammersmash," he whispered to his thumb mask. No fair! Stink was pencil-snapping mad. He slammed his hand fist-down on his desk. Yikes. He snapped a pencil right in half. Stink did not know his own strength! Stink had the stamina to snap more pencils. Suddenly, Stink felt like punching stuff. Stink felt like kicking stuff. Stink felt like chopping stuff with his bare hands. Stink had a new strategy— he, Stink E. Moody, would be the new karate kid! So what if he did not have a karate uniform? He pulled on his blue bathrobe. He wrapped the belt around his waist (twice) and tied it in a knot. Presto! Stink was already a blue belt. Ka-pow! Stink threw a vertical punch. Keeyah! Trading cards went flying off the mirror. Kapoom! He kicked his sand-dollar collection off the shelf. Stink pulled back his elbow and wham! He

knocked out the Hulk, Iron Man, Wolverine, Sabretooth, and all four of the Fantastic Four. Stink karate-kicked the air. Ha-cha! His cardboard guitar fell off the wall. Yee-ah! His lava lamp almost tipped over. Youch. One kick to the wall, and he ripped his original Star Wars poster and his Super Reading Award certificate. There just wasn't enough room for a super high-flying ultra-death-defying karate kick. Stink ran across the hall to Judy's room. He stuck one leg out and gave a super-duper, mile-high-flying foot jab way up in the air. BANZAI!

Uh-oh. Something fell and crashed to the floor. E-I-E-I-O! Judy's trophy! Her Giraffe Award— the third-grade prize she'd won for sticking her

neck out for others— had just become the Headless Giraffe Award. Stink duck-taped it back together. Good as new! Almost. He hid the now-wobbly, bobbleheaded Giraffe Award behind some piles of Nancy Drew books. He ran downstairs to tell Mom and Dad all about his new sport. Mom said karate was right up Stink's alley. Dad went online and signed him up for a class! Stink could not wait to get started. In the living room, he karate-chopped the encyclopedia. Youch! In the kitchen, he karate-chopped spaghetti, pretzel sticks, and a box of cereal. Mood Flakes flew across the floor. In the TV room, he spied Judy's lost-and-found pencil collection sitting on a shelf. Perfect! U-na-gi! With each karate chop, another pencil went zinging through the air. Smiley-face pencils, Student-of-the-Week pencils, Virginia Dare School pencils.

"Stink!" Judy yelled at her pencil-snapping, cuckoo-head brother. "So what? These are just loser pencils you found on the floor at school." "I'm collecting them. To show the principal how many pencils are wasted." Stink held up his hand. "Don't talk to me. Talk to The Hand. This bad boy is a human chopping machine. It can't stop. It has to chop."