Junie B. Jones is Not a Crook By: Barbara Park

Junie B. Jones is Not a Crook  By: Barbara Park

Scholastic, New York

Copy Right: 1997

(Series Selection-3)

            Junie B.’s conundrum in this book is that she has lost her gloves and she thinks that means someone has stolen them.  Later she is faced with another problem when she finds “one of those new pens with four different colors” in the hallway (which makes scribbling a pleasure). She figures since the owner didn’t take good care of it and her gloves got taken that keeping the pen makes everything fair and square.   When her grandpa tells her a story of his missing wallet and how if someone hadn’t returned it everything would have been lost, it makes her feel like maybe she is a crook.  She does eventually find her gloves on other girls hands and demands them back. The girl replies that Junie must not have wanted them very bad because she didn’t take good care of them. After she got her gloves back, she took the wonderful pen she found and left it in the lost and found.

            This book actually teaches a morals lesson to its young reader.  Not all of the books in this series do, so this is a nice change from the typical.  The text to self connection is one of doing the right thing and not taking what does not belong to you – no matter how neat it is.  The text to text connection is once again other Junie B. books, but also books like fudge that leave the reader with a message.