Stinky Stanley Stinks Again

by Paul Geraghty

Like Hodgman, Culkin and Spiner understand that the best middle-grade humor comes from kids orchestrating elaborate schemes with total commitment to the bit. Where Stanley's gross-out contest is the centerpiece, this book builds its comedy around two pranksters trying to out-prank each other—same energy of escalating chaos and rival one-upmanship, but with a friendship angle that sneaks up on you.

by Mari Lu Robbins

Published in 1967, this gives you that same sense of a secret hidden in plain sight—kids discovering something extraordinary that adults have overlooked—but Konigsburg builds mystery and character depth alongside the adventure. The way she weaves together the kids' present-day quest with the historical mystery of a statue mirrors how Hodgman layers Stanley's secret with the contest drama.

by Barbara Taylor

Here's your surprise pick: it's historical fiction about young Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley solving mysteries in Victorian London. You might expect pure adventure, but Stratford captures that same irreverent, slightly chaotic energy Hodgman brings to her characters—kids who are smarter than the adults around them and aren't afraid to bend the rules to prove it. The humor is drier but just as committed.

by Louis Sachar

Sachar builds his comedy the same way Hodgman does—through absurd premises treated with complete seriousness. A school where each floor is a different world, teachers with bizarre quirks, and logic that only makes sense within its own rules. Both authors trust their readers to follow the weird without over-explaining, and both find humor in the specificity of their strange setups.

by Susan Hill

Winick mixes genuine action and mystery with the kind of rapid-fire, joke-heavy dialogue that Hodgman uses—a boy appears from nowhere with no memory, and his friends have to figure out what he is while dealing with increasingly weird threats. It's got that same balance of "wait, is this actually dangerous?" and "why am I laughing?" that makes Stinky Stanley work.