Junie B. Jones

I was very worried about Lily starting Kindergarten having never been away from me. Kim suggested reading Lily some books about starting Kindergarten and she gave me a list of recommendations. Shortly thereafter I found myself at the bookstore without Kim’s list. So instead of getting a book recommended to me by a kindergarten teacher I got the first book about kindergarten that I saw at the store. In my defense book stores are a 45 minute drive from my house. We ended up with the book, Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus. This book is about a girl named Junie B. and her first day of kindergarten. It is a chapter book, but intended for younger kids.

At first Lily wasn’t interested in listening to this book and she started kindergarten without being prepared by a book. She did alright. I continued to try and read this book to Lily on regular basis. The book is filled with naughty forbidden words like: stupid, dump, and shut up. Lily picked up all these words. Soon she was getting in trouble on a regular basis for her inappropriate vocabulary. Jeff suggested that we stop reading the Junie B. book. However, by then Lily was really enjoying the book. We went from her listening to one page at a time to one chapter and then to her sitting still and listening to the whole entire book in one sitting. This took about an hour.

The fact that Lily has a receptive language delay does not mean she is incapable of receiving language and listening, it means it takes a good bit of concentration. I feel that the more she listens the better she will get at listening. Exercising the receptive language muscle. For this reason I continue on with the Junie B. book. In fact we checked out more of them from the library. Lily is happy to spend an hour everyday reading the same Junie B. book. I however needed to expand our repertoire.

She got the next few Junie B. books for Christmas. We continue to enjoy the books on a daily basis. I am glad to have a bit of variety. Lily continues to struggle with remembering what is appropriate for Junie B. is not appropriate for Lily.

In the books Junie B. often screams, just like Lily in real life. Whenever the words are printed in all caps and it says that Junie B. screamed that particular passage I scream it out while reading. Lily lives for that part. She asks me to repeat it over and over again. I insist that we take turns. Junie B. screams whole paragraphs of text at a time and Lily read it. We do it over and over again, screaming at the top of our lungs. We dissolve into giggles. Jeff will be in another room and come to see what in the world is going on. Just reading a book we will tell him. He shakes his head. He is not at all thrilled with Junie B.