Junie B. Jones, Shipwrecked

There is a school play in Junie B. Jones, Shipwrecked, and Barbara Park lets 8 year olds hear about it from the one child least equipped to report it accurately.

What happens

It opens with a boy called Roger being sick on the classroom floor.

I am not easing you in, because the book doesn't either. Junie B. gives you the full report. The smell. The Cheerios. Her own eyes, which she says have a brain of their own and keep sneaking looks at it. Then Gus Vallony the caretaker turns up with a tub of magic powder that makes the whole lot disappear, and Herb decides it would be a brilliant birthday present for his mum, right up until Gus tells him what the powder is called.

After that, Room One spends an entire morning holding their noses shut so the germs cannot get in. Including through lunch. Which is how you learn that you cannot really taste a cheese sandwich, or swallow, with your nostrils pinched.

Then the story proper starts. Mr Scary announces a play for Parents' Night, about Columbus and his ships. Junie B. votes for a mouse play instead and is overruled. Then her mother says the word star, and everything changes.

Whoever brings in the most facts about Columbus gets first pick of the parts.

You can see where this is heading, and that's fine, because the pleasure is entirely in the telling. Junie B. tells you what happened, and you work out what actually happened. She is quite sure she has been very reasonable. She has also breathed nose air onto a classmate's shoulder on purpose.

Two things to know. The being sick is described in loving detail for a good few pages, and a squeamish child will feel every word of it. And the grammar is deliberately wrong the whole way through, because that is how Junie B. talks. Throwed up. Bestest friend. My whole mouth came open. Some parents find this maddening. In my experience children find it hilarious, and it does not stick.

It's an American classroom as well, with Parents' Night and Room One and a school play about Columbus finding the New World, told the old-fashioned way.

What to read next

If your reader wants to know how Junie B. ended up in Room One at all, First Grader (At Last!) is here too. That one is her actual first day, with a best friend who has found new friends, a pair of twins, and something on the board that Junie B. cannot read.