A Little Monkey Business

I've occasionally spoken with parents, teachers, and librarians who are disenchanted with Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones series. After all, Junie B. struggles with irregular verbs and she is often unkind and insulting. But her books remain popular and many parents overlook their initial reservations, happy just to have their child reading something.

I'm always interested in what makes any given series successful. We've plowed through many of the Magic Tree House and the A to Z Mystery series in our house. It doesn't take more than a few books to see the formula (not that that guarantees success: there are countless imitators of the popular series who cannot find their way into print).

Raising boys, I never expected the Junie B. Jones series to become popular at our house. Boys, so we are told, quickly develop a gender bias and soon begin refusing to read stories featuring girl protagonists. (This is especially frustrating for the authors of "middle readers" who hear, "Great concept. Can you rework it and change the main character from a girl to a boy?")

So when the boys brought home their first book from the school library this year it surprised me how excited Kevin was to have selected Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business. He skipped right over the Dr. Seuss and Frog and Toad and Little Bear "early readers" and insisted that Junie B. was the book he wanted to read aloud to me (he reads a few pages and then I take over).

Kevin is unlikely to admit it, but I think he enjoys Junie B.'s mischievous behavior and willingness to talk back to her parents and teachers. He grins with delight at her verbal assaults and he asks me to reread the funnier passages:

I made a big fist at him. "HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THIS UP YOUR NOSE, YOU BIG DUMB JIM?" I hollered.

Then Principal frowned at me. And so I smiled.

"I hate that guy," I said nicely.

No problem with the irregular verbs, either: the boys have almost made a competition out of being first to detect and shout out corrections to Junie B.'s faulty grammar. And they react with shock at the inappropriate behavior, even the more subtle and sneaky variety--and it still makes me feel good to see how finely tuned their moral compasses remain.

And the Junie B. series is funny, make no mistake about it. As bored as I am with the A to Z Mysteries and the Magic Tree House series, I have to confess that even I found myself laughing while taking my turn reading Junie B. aloud the other night.

Because her Grandma refers to her new baby brother as the "cutest little monkey" she ever saw, Junie B. concludes he is an actual monkey which causes all sorts of conflict at school when she insists upon it. Eventually the Principal explains that adults sometimes use expressions like lucky duck and busy bee that can be confusing to children. Junie B. and her classmates quickly get the concept:

"Hey! I just thought of another one!" I said very excited. "A dumb bunny isn't a real alive bunny, either! It's just a plain old dumb guy!"

Then my friend Lucille raised her hand.

"I've got one, too," she said. "Sometimes my nanna calls my daddy a couch potato. Only he's not a real potato. He's just a lazy bum."

"Yeah, and I'm not a big pig," said my new boyfriend Ricardo. "But my mom says I eat like one."

[The lesson quickly ends...]   Then I gave Lucille back her red chair. She was very nice to me.

"I'm sorry that your brother isn't a real monkey, Junie B.," she said.

"Thank you, Lucille," I said. "I'm sorry that your daddy isn't a real potato, too."

After this great example of fine literature, it came as no surprise to me when I saw the books the boys brought home from the library yesterday: Justin had Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed and Kevin had Junie B. Jones and her Big Fat Mouth.