Junie B.’s Essential Survival Guide To School Book Review

Junie B. Jones

Title: Junie B.’s Essential Survival Guide To School
Author: Barbara Park
Series: Junie B. Jones
Genres: Survival guide, diary, journal
Age range: First Graders

This is Junie B.’s hilarious guide on how to survive your first years at school. She says she wrote it with some help from Grampa Frank Miller. This survival guide/journal is based on Junie’s own experiences as someone who has been in school for over a year and a half!

Section 1: Getting Started

This section tells you all the things you need to know and buy before you go to school for the first time. It talks about backpacks and how much they can weigh, some of the feelings you may experience on your first day of school, what to wear, school supplies (boring and fun), what to say to the other kids in your class, etc.

Section 2: Getting There

Junie lists all the ways she can think of getting from home to school and back, and lets you know which method she likes best and which she detests, plus rules and etiquette for the school bus and carpools.

Section 3: Getting Bossed Around

This section gives descriptions of all the BOSSY people at school who will tell you what to do and when to do it, including the principal, the janitor, your teachers, the nurse, etc. Of course, Junie knows these people are paid to boss kids around at school, and you have to listen to them.

Section 4: Getting In Trouble

What Junie mainly talks about in this section is how to stay out of trouble, not how to get into it. She tells you about passing notes in class, calling other kids names, rules at school (and what she thinks of them, of course), etc.

Section 5: Getting Graded

Junie discusses homework, marks, tests and (gulp) report cards! She gives tons of illustrated examples in this section, so you are fully prepared for what some of this graded work will look like.

Section 6: Getting Smiley

This section is, as Junie says, “about new friends and other happy stuff.” She gives lots of good advice about not being nervous about meeting the new kids in your class – they’re all in the same boat as you, after all! There are other things Junie loves about school, and she tells you all about the bathroom, the water fountain and all the good smells at school.