Junie B. Jones books
Apr. 24th, 2008 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gategrrlFor anyone who has a young kid, you might know about the Junie B Jones books. It's a series featuring a personality-filled Kindergartner named Junie B(eatrice) Jones, who regularly drives her parents nuts (gently, of course) with her ideas, expressions, and way of viewing the world. *I* think the books are pretty hysterical. In the earlier ones Junie speaks like a regular little kid, but as the series moves on, she starts sounding like the gamblers in Guys and Dolls - that same speech pattern. Took me a while to pin that down, but now that I have, it's a score.
I've heard criticisms from other mothers online about the ungrammatical style of the books, and how they'll never let their young/beginner reader get near them. I think that's a shame, because they're funny.
The reason why this came up in my own head was a conversation I had with another mother who's middle school boy, like Mermaid, is not a reader. Rather, she said, he wasn't a reader UNTIL he found the spin-off novelizations of the game "Warcraft". She was amazed that he ripped through thick (250p+) books in hours or short days. "Hey," she said, "As long as he reading *something* I'm happy. And if he's reading something he *wants* to read, that's a thousand times better!"
Mermaid is the same way - she went nuts over the two "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" books she found at the school bookfair, and zipped through them in four short days. She even stayed up late reading them. She read them in the car. She read them when she got home. She read them *everywhere* until she finished them. Does it matter to me if what she reads isn't grammatically correct, or has a goofy story, or features teen vampires or silly stick figure cartoons? Hell no. I just want her to read.
And that's what parents really and truly want (the ones that care about reading at all, that is). Books that engage their kids, that excite them about stories or help them absorb vocabulary and contexts. It's a key to future thinking, literacy and, hopefully, some success out in the work world.
I think that parents that fuss too much over what their children LIKE to read, what interests the child, misses the point and a wonderful opportunity to get their child moving along into reading *other* things. You never know where curiousity will lead - and it could lead to their own research about, say, the history of vampires, which could lead into research about history of Transylvania, then the Balkans, then curiousity about history in general...you just never know.
Grammar is important, yes; but even more important is the excitement of *learning*, which to me, is what books are ALL about, even so called "fiction" and SF/F books and Westerns and name-your-genre.
Phew! I didn't mean to get onto the pulpit and preach.
I've heard criticisms from other mothers online about the ungrammatical style of the books, and how they'll never let their young/beginner reader get near them. I think that's a shame, because they're funny.
The reason why this came up in my own head was a conversation I had with another mother who's middle school boy, like Mermaid, is not a reader. Rather, she said, he wasn't a reader UNTIL he found the spin-off novelizations of the game "Warcraft". She was amazed that he ripped through thick (250p+) books in hours or short days. "Hey," she said, "As long as he reading *something* I'm happy. And if he's reading something he *wants* to read, that's a thousand times better!"
Mermaid is the same way - she went nuts over the two "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" books she found at the school bookfair, and zipped through them in four short days. She even stayed up late reading them. She read them in the car. She read them when she got home. She read them *everywhere* until she finished them. Does it matter to me if what she reads isn't grammatically correct, or has a goofy story, or features teen vampires or silly stick figure cartoons? Hell no. I just want her to read.
And that's what parents really and truly want (the ones that care about reading at all, that is). Books that engage their kids, that excite them about stories or help them absorb vocabulary and contexts. It's a key to future thinking, literacy and, hopefully, some success out in the work world.
I think that parents that fuss too much over what their children LIKE to read, what interests the child, misses the point and a wonderful opportunity to get their child moving along into reading *other* things. You never know where curiousity will lead - and it could lead to their own research about, say, the history of vampires, which could lead into research about history of Transylvania, then the Balkans, then curiousity about history in general...you just never know.
Grammar is important, yes; but even more important is the excitement of *learning*, which to me, is what books are ALL about, even so called "fiction" and SF/F books and Westerns and name-your-genre.
Phew! I didn't mean to get onto the pulpit and preach.
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Date: 2008-04-25 03:20 am (UTC)There are lots of people who do let their kids read what they want, but there are many more who want to choose "appropriate" books...but their ideas of appropriate are either too hard, too boring, or both. Then there are the parents who want their kids to read "classics"...sometimes when they're only in second grade! I'm sorry, "Treasure Island" was not written for seven year olds to read by themselves, and even fifth graders are probably going to have problems with the language and vocabulary. And that's probably the easiest classic to access!
Last week, I had someone who wanted her daughter to read "Rebecca". Her fourth grade daughter, who'd just finished "Beacon Street Girls". Because she thought she was ready for adult books. Her alternate choice? "Jane Eyre". I convinced her to take some more age-appropriate but still challenging stuff.
I love Junie B, but I get all the comments about how horrible it is too. I think they're hysterical when read out loud, because they really do sound like a little kid. And kids do get the difference between the way Junie B talks and the appropriate way to speak. THey're just not that dumb. The thing that most people fail to understand is that kids who read for fun--whether they read comics or Hardy Boys or Boxcar Children or Treasure Island--are the kids who will keep reading. If parents try to "guide" their choices to what they deem appropriate, they'll kill that kids' love of reading as quickly as if they burned all the book on their shelves.
Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now. ;)