Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket is a very funny story for 8 year olds about a girl who has decided a rooster is going to peck her head off.<\/p>\n
Junie B. is almost six. She’s in kindergarten in Room Nine and she has two bestest friends, Lucille and that Grace.<\/p>\n
Then her teacher announces an end of year outing to a farm. The whole class goes wild. Junie B. does not.<\/p>\n
Farms have ponies. Ponies, she explains over dinner, can stomple you into the ground and kill you to death. She saw it on television at the babysitter’s. The programme was called WHEN PONIES ATTACK.<\/p>\n
Her mum talks her down with a lovely story about uncle Billy’s pony Stubby, who followed her about like a puppy. Then she mentions, just in passing, that uncle Billy also kept a mean old rooster.<\/p>\n
And that’s that. Ponies are forgotten. Now it’s roosters.<\/p>\n
A boy at school has told her roosters can peck your head into a nub. (A nub, she explains very patiently at breakfast, is a roundish, ballish head knob.) Nobody can talk her out of it. Roosters do not listen to reason.<\/p>\n
The whole book is her telling you all this herself, and that’s where the fun is. She hands you the grown up translations as she goes. ‘Rolled is the grown-up word for signed me up and made me go. Whatever is the grown-up word for that is the dumbest thing I ever heard.<\/p>\n
She’s shameless with it too. Asked to draw a farm animal for the class, she produces a tree lying on its side with one rooster foot poking out from under a branch. He did not get out in time, apparently.<\/p>\n
One thing to look at before you hand it over. Junie B.’s grammar is wrong on purpose and nobody ever corrects it. She runned and she hided and she thinked fast. It’s American as well, so you get kindergarten and first grade and Mother and Daddy. Plenty of children find all of that hilarious. If yours is being pulled up on spelling at school just now, read a page first and see what you think.<\/p>\n
What finally gets her off the bus is very nicely done. Farmer Flores offers her the job of special farm hand. It comes with walking at the front of the line, first go on the tractor, and helping him keep all the children in order.<\/p>\n
She only hears the last one.<\/p>\n
If she goes down well there are plenty more of these, and the one to reach for next is Junie B. Jones, First Grader (At Last!). That’s her the following September, sitting with the very first graders she was dreading, next to a girl who won’t even get her name right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket is a very funny story for 8 year olds about a girl who has decided a rooster is going to peck her head off. Junie B. is almost six. She’s in kindergarten in Room Nine and she has two bestest friends, Lucille and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10947,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7846,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Junie B. Jones, First Grader (At Last!)","lr_seo_hook":"Almost six, off to a farm, and quite sure a rooster will peck her head off."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[129],"class_list":["post-7838","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-funny-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-barbara-park"],"yoast_title":"Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket by Barbara Park | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Almost six, off to a farm, and quite sure a rooster will peck her head off. For ages 8+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n