Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus

Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus

Written by: Barbara Park

Illustrated by: Denise Brunkus

Age Group: 2^nd Grade

Published: 1992

Junie B. Jones is a huge series of books for children to read. They are all hilarious and about the same little girl. This book is about Junie Beatrice Jones and her first day of Kindergarten and she hates the school bus. Her friend Lucille tells her that she is going to get chocolate milk poured all over her head. At the end of the day instead of leaving school and going on the school bus she hides in the teachers room and when everyone is gone, she leaves her hiding spot and starts exploring the school. A janitor finds her and calls her mother and Junie goes home and explains to her mother why she did this.

All of the lessons in the Junie B. Jones books are lessons that all children this age go through and have to handle, especially in this book. Most kids are afraid of there first day of school and are especially scared to take the bus. The bus has many older students on it, so to the younger students they feel so little and scared of how they are going to be treated, especially if they are hearing stories. This is a great lesson of what to do and what not to do, and if you are afraid of something you need to speak up and actually tell someone the feelings you are having.

The book doesn’t have many pictures in the book, but when there are, they are very funny. They are just sketches of pictures and they are very detailed. In my opinion I think that this book would be just as great even if it didn’t have any pictures at all. My favorite part of the pictures are that they make Junie B. Jones look kind of rough sometimes, they have one of her socks always squished down on the side which is so funny.

I would have many of the Junie B. Jones book in my classroom. Since these books are very leaning from books, the students can always relate. In my classroom I would want the students to write about and draw pictures of something they are afraid of when it comes to school, or something they were afraid of. We could have a lesson of each of the things the children say, and I bet that some will overlap. Then the students will realize that some of their classmates are also afraid of the same thing as them, so they know that they are not alone. In my classroom I would try to have as many of these books as possible on my shelf so the students have options of many kinds.