Junie B. Jones Loves Handsome Warren

by Barbara Park

For a light read between the massive tomes that are Game of Thrones, I picked up a Junie B. Jones book my daughter brought home from the library. This one is about Junie B. and her friends squabbling over the attentions of a new boy at school. They each want him to be their "boyfriend" and to love them. Junie tries her hardest to get Warren's attention but he just thinks she's weird. So she tries to act more normal, but that doesn't work either. Finally her mother tells her that to make new friends she has to be herself, and to show she cares about other people's feelings. In the end, Junie shines all on her own. I did like that.

I also liked some parts of the story that showed Junie in a very realistic light, demanding that her parents take her shopping immediately to get something she wants, assuming that certain possessions and appearances will gain her popularity, and I really liked how she discovered she could find things around her house to dress up in, when her mother wouldn't buy her a princess dress (the results were hilarious, of course). Junie's frequent grammatical errors and use of phrases that seem beyond her years didn't bother me; kids are like that. But it wasn't as amusing as some of the other Junie books I've read. And I did find the entire premise of kindergarten girls fighting over the attentions of a boy rather annoying. My daughter is going into second grade and is just now showing the kind of innocent interest in boys that Junie displays here. Back in kindergarten that was not the case. So it felt a little out of place to me. Might have been more appropriate as part of the "Junie B. Jones: First Grader" series, and even then I might question it.

Rating: 2/5 ........ 80 pages, 1996

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