The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Sachar, Louis. Fuzzy Mud. New York: Delacorte Press, 2015. The novel is narrated in omniscient third-person narration in past tense. Alternating chapters show different perspectives and various epistolary documents.

The first chapter introduces Tamaya, a fifth grader at Woodridge Academy in Pennsylvania. She and her best friends sat with a group of older boys. Chad, the coolest boy, told the girls that he had been in the woods the night before when he spotted a mad hermit who lived with a pack of wolves. Tamaya scolded him and told him that no one was allowed in the woods. He and her friends laughed at her and called her a goody-two-shoes.

A year prior, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Environment had held a secret hearing about SunRay Farm and Biolene. Jonathan Fitzman had invented a new form of life called ergonyms, which were a single-celled organism that could be rapidly and exponentially reproduced and then burnt as a clean fuel that could replace gasoline.

Tamaya later walked home with her seventh-grade neighbor, Marshall, who had been moody. He told her he was taking a shortcut through the woods. She was not allowed to walk home alone, so she went with him. Unbeknownst to Tamaya, Marshall had been being bullied by Chad for weeks and Chad had announced his intentions to fight Marshall on the street corner after school. Deep in the woods, Tamaya fell down next to a strange pile of fuzzy mud. Marshall admitted he was lost and went to climb up a rock to get his bearings.

Chad found the pair of them and started beating Marshall up. He told Tamaya he was going to beat her up next. Tamaya picked up a handful of mud and threw it straight at Chad’s face, then she and Marshall ran home. Tamaya went inside and cleaned up, but she noticed a strange rash on her hand.

Back at the senate committee, Jonathan Fitzman promises the senators that the ergonyms cannot escape the lab to infiltrate the environment because oxygen immediately kills them. Professor Alice Mayfair assures the senators that the rapidly growing population of humanity and their need for fuel was a much bigger threat than the ergonyms.

In the morning, Tamaya woke up with an even worse rash. Her mother promised to take her to the doctor after school. Tamaya went into class and started working on a writing prompt in which she had to detail how to blow up a balloon with complete precision. However, her hand started bleeding and she was sent to the nurse’s office without getting to finish her assignment.

Marshall went to his class and felt anxious about running into Chad. However, Chad never arrived. Headmistress Thaxton came into the room and asked if anyone knew where Chad was. Students informed her that he had wanted to beat Marshall up after school, but Marshall lied and said he did not know anything about Chad’s disappearance.

Tamaya went to lunch and learned that Chad was missing. She went outside and found Marshall, but he told her to keep quiet about the truth. She felt bad for Chad, though, so she took her lunch and went into the woods to find him.

Marshall went back to class and felt happy that Chad was gone. Mrs. Thaxton called Marshall back to her office and told him that Tamaya was missing. Marshall lied again and said he did not know where Tamaya was. Marshall pretended to go back to class but instead ran into the woods after Tamaya.

Tamaya found more fuzzy mud in the woods than the day before. The narration switches to three months later to when the senate committee had a public hearing about the disaster that had happened in Heath Cliff. Dr. Peter Smythe of the CDC testified that he had recommended that the president order a quarantine for Heath Cliff because thousands of people had been infected and five had died.

Back in the woods, Tamaya accidentally stepped in a puddle of mud. At the school, Mrs. Thaxton put the school in lockdown and called the parents to pick up their students. Tamaya found Chad and fed him lunch because he was starving.

The senators interviewed Jonathan Fitzman and asked the inventor if the ergonyms could have mutated to be able to survive in oxygen. Jonathan Fitzman said the odds would be a trillion to one, but at the rate the cells multiplied mutations would take place quite often.

Tamaya fell into a ditch full of fuzzy mud. Marshall caught up with Tamaya and Chad and helped Tamaya wipe the mud off her face and body. Chad apologized to Marshall for bullying him. The children headed back and were discovered by a man and a group of search dogs.

Tamaya and her friends were taken to the hospital and Chad was put in critical condition. The president ordered a quarantine as thousands of people came down with rashes. A veterinarian invented a cure for one of his dog patients. Tamaya was injected with the cure and started to recover. Snow fell over Heath Cliff and killed the ergonyms, who could not survive subzero temperatures. However, everyone worried that there might be a few mutated cells that could survive the cold.

Tamaya and Marshall were released from the hospital. They went to visit Chad and discovered he was doing better. The senators decided that Biolene was such a clean and affordable energy that it was worth the risk, so they did not ban the substance. Chad was released from the hospital and the three friends went to the woods to look at the snow. At the end of the novel, Tamaya turns in her balloon assignment.