Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed

Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed is a bedtime comedy for 8 year olds about one small girl and one very big worry.

What happens

It starts on school picture day. Junie B. is wearing her new dress with a Tyrannosaurus Dottie on the front (Rex is the boy, Dottie is the girl). She argues with the cheese man about why she has to say cheese, and he takes her picture before she's ready.

Then, lined up for the class photo, a boy called Paulie Allen Puffer tells her the awful truth. Everybody has a monster under their bed. His brother in seventh grade says so. And the drool on your pillow in the morning? That's monster drool.

Junie B. is NOT having it. She begs everyone to just say "right", monsters aren't real. Nobody will. Her friend Grace even adds that monsters turn invisible when you look at them, which explains why nobody's ever seen one.

What follows is every parent's bedtime, told from the other side. Junie B. gets out of bed again and again. She offers to watch the late news. She suggests baking a lemon pie. She climbs into her baby brother's cot (after putting the baby on the floor).

Her dad searches the whole room, right down to the crayon box. Her stuffed elephant, Philip Johnny Bob, offers to stomp the monster with his giant elephant feet. Junie B. gently points out that he's only got fluffy inside him.

And Grandma Miller is a star. When Grace says her mum vacuumed their monster up and squished it flat, Grandma hoovers under the bed and then reverses over the bag with her car! (It still isn't a proper flatso, apparently.)

Junie B.'s voice is pure five-year-old, with all the wrong words and total confidence. She calls her grandma Helen to her face, and gets told not to.

A heads-up if your child already worries about the dark. Paulie's description is very vivid (the monster lies on your pillow and practises fitting your head in its mouth), and it could plant an idea that wasn't there before. For a child who's past that stage, it's mostly just funny, and the grown-ups keep telling her, very firmly, that monsters aren't real.

What to read next

If your reader loves Grandma Miller as much as Junie B. does, there's a whole book about grandmas to try. Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal has Lucille's very rich nanna, a big gold car and a plan to get invited to her enormous house.