jurgrace's Full Review: Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook (Junie B. Jones Seri...
Kindergartner Junie B. Jones is so excited. Her grampa Miller went to the store and bought her a pair of warm furry mittens when it wasn't even her birthday or anything. She is so excited about her mittens that she wears them all through school the next day. At recess, her mittens impede her regular game of horses as she can't exactly be the brown horse with her friends, if she's wearing black mittens. To solve the problem, Junie B. (don't you dare forget the "B") leaves the mittens on top of her attractive coat under a tree while she plays.
In a shocking turn of events, the attractive winter coat is still in place at the end of recess, but the mittens are gone. Junie B.'s teacher, Mrs. (she has a last name, but our narrator just likes Mrs. and that's all) sends her to Principal's office to look in the lost and found for her mittens. While there, Junie B. falls in love with a teddy bear backpack, only to be told that there are a few caveats to the "Finders keepers, losers weepers" saying, like that you are usually stealing when you take stuff that's not yours.
While I wasn't very happy with my daughter calling people "crooks" after we read this chapter of the Junie B. Jones saga, overall I was pretty impressed with Junie B.'s behavior (compared to usual). Starting with the way she came up with a better solution to the brown horse dilemma than I expected, all the way to her ultimately making the right decision and returning the pen she found (which no one probably would have missed), this as close as Junie B. Jones has come to being a model citizen.
For this, I am thankful to author Barbara Park. My six year old loves reading about Junie B., and I get tired of having to remind her that Junie B. does not make good choices. Parents reading this book with their children will also find it amusing when she explains to Mrs. that she's actually not allowed to go to Principal's office any more, or her mother will get upset.
Like the rest of the series, Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook is written from the first person, from Junie B.'s horrific, grammatically incorrect perspective. There are eight short chapters here, for a total of 67 pages. Sprinkled throughout the book there are about one or two black and white drawings from Denise Brunkus per chapter. Each illustration is a cute depiction of a scene from the book, but they aren't so exciting that my daughter asks to see every one of them.
If you haven't been introduced to Junie B. Jones yet, and don't care about starting from the beginning, Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook is not a bad place to start. While there are some in the series I would skip, this outing is a definite 'Must Read' for fans or potential fans of Junie B.
At 502 words, this review is Lean-n-Mean. Come on, bookworms, join in the fun. 'Movies' is killing us.
A terrible thing happened to Junie B. Jones! And it s called -- someone took her new black furry mittens! And they kept them! They didn t even put the...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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