Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook

Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook is a warm, funny story for 8 year olds about a pair of furry mittens, a lost property box and finders keepers.

What happens

Grampa Frank Miller has bought Junie B. some black furry mittens. Not for her birthday. Not for Christmas. Just for no good reason, which she says is the bestest reason she ever heard of.

She's so full of glee that she dances on the dining room table (that ends in a time-out). Then she wears the mittens to kindergarten with her attractive winter jacket, even though it isn't actually cold.

"This is what fur hands look like when they're waving hello," she tells everybody. She tells them a LOT, until Mrs. takes the mittens off her and puts them on her desk.

At playtime she gets hot playing horses and leaves her jacket and mittens in a careful pile under a tree. When she comes back, the mittens are gone. "911! 911!" Somebody stole them!

So off she goes to the school office and the Lost and Found box. It's full of wonderful things, including a teddy bear backpack she'd very much like to take home instead (the Principal says no). On the way back to class she spots a pen that writes in four different colours, lying by the water fountain. Nobody's watching...

Finders keepers, losers weepers. Everybody says it. So it must be the rule. Mustn't it?

Then comes the loveliest bit. That evening Grampa Miller tells her how he once lost his wallet, and a stranger drove all the way to his house and left it in his mailbox. Inside was a photo of him holding Junie B. as a tiny baby. Suddenly that pen isn't feeling quite so lucky.

It's a really gentle way into a big question about fairness and honesty, and it never preaches. Junie B. gets there in her own wonky way, still talking at full volume.

Her voice is the whole fun of it. She runned, she stoled, she weared a grin. She's heartsick, which she explains is the grown-up word for when your heart is sick.

If you've got a reader who has ever lost something they loved and been told to check lost property, they'll know exactly how she feels.

What to read next

Grampa Miller is lovely in this one. For more of him, try the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake, where he's babysitting and Junie B. beats him at Old Maid five times in a row (by cheating, just a bit).