Cody Harmon, King of Pets

By Claudia Mills, Rob Shepperson (Illustrator)

Book #5 in the Franklin School Friends series

A boy with nine pets must find a way to enter them all into a school pet show despite the high entrance fees.

4.8/7 Bookroo expert·3.8/5 Goodreads · 111 ratings

144 pages· 14,899 words· Est. 2 hour read

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Bookroo's summary

Cody Harmon loves animals but not school subjects. With nine pets and a costly entry fee, the school pet show seems impossible. Can Cody find a way for everyone to participate? Discover how Cody's creativity and love for animals turn a challenge into a heartwarming solution, ensuring every pet and classmate gets their moment to shine.

From the publisher

Cody Harmon doesn’t love reading, math, spelling, or really any of the subjects that Miss Molina teaches in her third-grade class. But he lives on a farm and he loves animals–he even has nine pets–so when the school holds a pet-show fund-raiser, it should be his time to shine. There’s a ten-dollar entrance fee per pet, though, and Cody can’t pay it for all nine pets. He’d love to take his pig, but what about the others? In the end, Cody figures out a way to lend out his pets so that every person in the class (and every pet) gets to participate in the show.

At a glance

Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Words: 14,899
Reading age: 7–10
Audience: Juvenile Reader
Lexile: 790L

Themes & topics

Books about sharing Books about friendship Books about school Books about pets Books about social themes

For the grown-ups

The parent guide

What families may want to know

Every family reads differently. These are the concepts our editors noticed in this book — worth seeking out for some readers, worth knowing about for others. The list isn't exhaustive, but it's a spoiler-light head start.

Potty Humor

"Super-duper-pooper Simon" and "if ...animals...poop, how much poop is there?"

After the last page

Talk about it together

Ask your child which pet of Cody’s they would have wanted to borrow for the fundraiser.

Discuss how we can learn from Cody’s example of sharing his pets with his classmates.

Ask why it was hard for Cody to share a pet with his best friend, Simon, and talk about how it’s easier to share when others are respectful of your pets or property.

What readers & critics say