Junie B. Jones, Toothless Wonder

Junie B. Jones, Toothless Wonder by Barbara Park is a chatty, very funny school story for 8 year olds about one wobbly front tooth and an awful lot of worrying.

What happens

Junie B. has a loose top tooth. Her teacher, Mr Scary, tells her losing a top one is the best, because afterwards she will look like a big kid. Better still, she will be the first in Room One to do it.

So obviously there should be a prize.

She marches up to his desk and negotiates. What about the stapler in the drawer? What about those Tums, does he suffer from gas and bloating? He ends up cutting her a star out of silver paper, and she tells him, quietly, that she does not think it is his best work.

That is Junie B. all over. She says the thing everybody else is only thinking, and then she says a bit more.

Then Sheldon mentions his toothless uncle Lou, who never brushed and has one yellow tooth left that can still bite an apple. And the worrying begins. Is she going to turn up on Monday looking like a weirdo? Will Herb even know her on the bus, or walk straight past her seat and leave her sitting there alone and toothless?

She talks herself through it on the walk home, out loud, arguing with herself and losing. Children who hold long conversations with themselves will recognise every bit of it.

She is in first grade here, in Mr Scary's Room One, and she mentions losing a bottom tooth last year, so this is not the beginning of her story. It reads perfectly well on its own.

There are two things a British household should know going in. The first is the American school, so expect first grade, recess and a tooth fairy who pays in dollars.

The second is the grammar. Junie B. narrates in her own wonky English throughout, with "funner" and "an even worser problem". It is deliberate and it is a lot of the joke, though it does put some parents off. If yours is a household where that would drive you mad, this is not the series for you.

She is also cheeky to the girl next to her, calling her a dumb bunny, and nobody makes her apologise.

What to read next

If Junie B. is a hit in your house, the very first Junie B. Jones book has her at almost six, terrified of the school bus, and refusing to get back on it.