Junie B. Jones Is Almost a Flower Girl

Junie B. Jones Is Almost a Flower Girl by Barbara Park is a very funny story for 8 year olds about a girl who announces she is the flower girl before anybody has actually asked her.

What happens

The day starts badly. Ricardo dumps her at playtime because he would rather chase a new girl called Thelma.

Junie B. tackles him on the grass, sits on his legs and explains the rules. Boyfriends and girlfriends are only allowed to chase each other. She doesn't make the rules, she says. She just enforces them.

It doesn't work. She spends the rest of the day feeling weakish and sickish inside.

Then both her parents tell her she's far too young for a boyfriend anyway. Little girls should be footloose and fancy-free.

Junie B. hears that as loose feet and is furious. She holds her baby brother's hand up against her own to prove how enormous she is. ("I am big like a giant lady, practically!")

So when Aunt Flo's wedding gets announced, here it is. Her chance to show everyone. She'll walk down the aisle first with a basket of petals and that will settle it. There's one snag and it's sitting right there in the title.

What makes it so funny is that you get every single thought the second it arrives. She informs you she is now a bachelorette. She sings the wedding march with words she's made up herself. She sits very still in the bath because that's what grown-up ladies do, gets bored out of her mind, then builds a bubble beard.

She gets things slightly wrong the whole way through too. A hard day has run her through the milk, not the mill. When her mother spells out s-l-e-e-p-y over her head, Junie B. announces she is not one bit slippery.

A word about the writing itself. Junie B. tells the story in her own voice, so the grammar is wrong on purpose. Runned, bestest, worstest, that's how she talks on every page. Loads of children find this the best bit. If your reader copies whatever they've just read, or if wonky spelling already niggles at them, it might get in the way.

It's American as well. Playtime is recess, her parents are Mother and Daddy. Nothing that stops a child reading, but it does sound different.

On the boyfriend business, both parents say no straight away and it stays a playground thing.

What to read next

If you've got a reader who reckons the grown ups are underestimating them, try Judy Moody Declares Independence. Judy spends a family trip soaking up talk about freedom and being nobody's subject, and she comes home with ideas.