Jo Jo Makoons: Fancy Pants

Dawn Quigley's Jo Jo Makoons: Fancy Pants is a funny story for 8 year olds about a first grader who's invited to a very fancy wedding and has no idea how to be fancy.

What happens

Jo Jo is seven and lives on the Pembina Ojibwe reservation with Mama, her kokum and Mimi the cat. Then a glittery envelope turns up on the kitchen table. (Glitter means important, obviously.) It's Auntie Anne's wedding invitation, and the wedding is almost a whole day's drive away in Wisconsin.

There'll be a sit-down dinner and a real live band. So Jo Jo gets out her sparkly purple unicorn notebook and starts making notes. How do you talk fancy? How do you eat fancy? And what do you actually DO at a wedding like that?

Her research is the best bit. Brie at school writes with her pinkies up, so that goes straight in the notebook. Kokum listens to Native hip-hop while she cleans, so the dusting and the vacuuming must be dance moves. And the Ojibwe word for blueberry pie is enormously long, which surely makes big words fancy too (Jo Jo counts forty-seven letters, and her teacher is not impressed).

It's all told by Jo Jo herself, and she's completely sure of her own logic. When grown-ups look at each other without saying anything, she knows it means they're proud of her. When a waitress asks how she likes her eggs, she points out that she hasn't eaten them yet. Your reader will be a step ahead of her the whole way, which is exactly why it's so funny.

There are big feelings in it too. Mimi can't come on the trip, and leaving her behind brings on some proper "big fatty tears". Then on the wedding morning everyone else looks shiny and beautiful, and Jo Jo doesn't feel fancy at all.

Her moushoom (her grandpa) died the year before, and it comes up gently. At the wedding Kokum explains that she won't dance for a year, because that's how she shows her feelings about losing him. It's a tender little moment rather than a heavy one.

Ojibwe and Michif words are sprinkled all through it, and there's a glossary at the end, so your reader will probably finish saying "miigwech" for thank you. Got a child who takes everything VERY literally? They'll find a kindred spirit here.

What to read next

This is the second book about Jo Jo. If your reader hasn't met her yet, Jo Jo Makoons: The Used-to-Be Best Friend is where she starts, with a cat who never says goodbye back and a big worry about who'll sit with her at lunch.