By Barbara Park
Junie B. finally makes it to first grade, and then discovers she can't see the chalkboard, which means the one thing she swore she'd never wear: glasses.
Junie B. Jones has been waiting her whole life to be a first grader, and now she's here, in a brand-new room with a brand-new teacher. There's just one problem. When she squints at the board, the letters go all blurry and swimmy, and squinting makes her look like a grouchy old bulldog. A trip to the eye doctor gives her the news she was dreading, she needs glasses, and Junie B. is dead sure glasses will make her the laughingstock of Room One. Then she puts them on, sees the whole world snap into focus, and decides maybe, just maybe, she looks like the smartest girl there is.
This is the book that made a generation of six-year-olds decide that reading is funny. Junie B. narrates in her own voice, wrong grammar and all, which lands like a joke on every page and makes a nervous new reader feel like they're smarter than the storyteller. The chapters are tiny, the print is big, and there's a picture every few pages to rest the eyes on. Best of all, this is the first of the first-grade books, so a child who clicks with Junie B. has a long shelf waiting, which is exactly what you want when you're trying to get a habit going again. And the glasses worry is a real first-grade-sized worry, the kind a child recognizes in themselves.