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80 of 104 people found the following review helpful. 8 of 9 people found the following review helpful. But after my 16 year old daughter caught a whiff of the books and told me they may not be so great, I read “Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus” for myself. On the surface, it’s no worse than what my 5 year old has seen in life before. But the fact is that literature does something to us, more than entertaining us. As I learned in graduate school in English literature and have been learning ever since as a father, teacher, and pastor, literature not only delights but (as Horace said) teaches by delighting. So what does “Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus” teach? 1. It teaches that hating things is normal and even funny. 2. She calls lots of things stupid. 3. Some of the pictures are pictures of how I want my kids NOT to act: going “Ta Da! Here I am, aren’t I cute?”, covering her ears and stamping her foot when she doesn’t like something, and giving a sassy and pretentious turn of the head back to another child. I’ve seen this exact pose on my 5 year-old, and now I think I know where it came from! 4. The humor in the book comes mostly from Junie doing things like hiding in the supply closet, wandering the school at will, and invading the nurse’s office and dumping out band-aids and playing with crutches and plays with the phone. And, of course, calling 911 and having a fire truck, police car, and ambulance arrive because of the “emergency” she claimed to be having. The consequences of all of this? Her Mother (there’s not Dad in the book) tells her that what she did was very wrong. That’s it. The book is targeted for kindergarteners through 3rd graders. Is this what we want to communicate to them? Is this really the kind of literature that Publisher’s Weekly and School Library Journal want to promote? Yikes! 10 of 12 people found the following review helpful. |





