The Racehorse Caper Book

Disclaimer: The following review contains profanity and is intended for adults/parents/teachers/etc. Parental guidance is suggested if you're letting your kids check out reviews.

I got this for my six year old niece last year because she was starting to get into "chapter books." I saw that the Junie B. series was well liked, and thought nothing of it. My niece also said she likes Junie B. and had read a few of them already.

Today I was watching my sister's children, and I saw this sitting on one of the end tables, so I read it while they were cleaning the playroom. (This could be accomplished in 15 minutes, but it took them two hours because they play as they go along. Fine with me; that's two hours of comparative peace where I don't have to actually watch them, and the playroom is still clean in the end. They come into the other room every five minutes to bother me about something, but it's still a good deal).

Anyway, I decided to read it to see just what I had gotten the eldest girl, and I was aghast. I can narrow my malcontent to two reasons.

Junie is a little bitch. I'm not sure I've ever been so disgusted with a leading protagonist. She grew disgusted with her friends if her friends did something better than she did (which ended up being par for the course for her, and that's good enough for the little shit as far as I'm concerned). Growing disgusted is all fine and good, but she took it out on them as well, and nobody corrected her, at least not successfully. It seems like children behaving this way without sincere parental correction has become commonplace in society, for I see it all the time when I'm out and about, but that doesn't mean I like it. Junie's parents did talk to her from time to time to point out what a horrible little beast she was being, but it seemed to have no effect, and then they let her go have more fun. Or if they didn't want her to have more fun, she just went and did it anyway, and the parents simply rolled their eyes at each other, and did nothing about it. Such disrespect from a five year old, and judging from some of the other reviews on here, people apparently find it cute. I don't, and that detracted from my enjoyment of this book, not that I'm part of the target audience. I find it rather alarming that this kind of behavior is presented to the target audience, though, but I could be overreacting. My niece likes these things, but I've never known her to act this way in public. I think that's because any kind of BS along those lines is nipped in the bud by the parents. She certainly isn't rewarded with doing whatever she wants to do if she doesn't shape up after her infraction with the parents just standing around with their thumbs up their asses going "Oh, that Junie. I'm not dealing with it, she is what she is." She's fucking five. Bill Cosby puts it well here: "You tell a child to come here, the child says 'no,' you go get it, and that's 'yes.'" (1-9-17 update: This kind of mentality explains some of the Cos's antics that have come out in the past couple of years... But it's still a good quote and applicable to raising children.)

Well, it looks like I'm getting a bit bent out of shape here. Let's move on to my second beef. The language. This is a matter of personal preference. I understand that the books are written from the point of view of a child, and the sentence structure, etc, reflect that. I'm OK there. I'm fine with some of the made-up words (grumpity, for example), but I draw the line at the bastardization of existing words. Case in point: 'structions for "instructions." I feel like this reinforces poor habits in children who are trying to learn how to correctly read and speak. Junie also "runned and runned" places... Oh, cut my throat and chop my liver... I can't take this much longer. The book was only 77 grade one or two reading level pages, so I finished it in half an hour or so (I'm not sure because the kids were interrupting regularly, and sometimes if things got too quiet in the other room, I felt compelled to get up and take a peek at what was going on). Still, it was a struggle to go on due to the poor grammar. Just pick a page, any page, and you'll see a "runned and runned" kind of thing for yourself somewhere on it. No wonder so many kids in school can't tell shit from Shinola. You teach them English in the classroom, then they read this. What are they to think?

So, were there any redeeming qualities in this book? Yes, there was one. I was very amused with the names of Junie's shoes: Pat and Leather. She lost one, and was stuck with just Pat and no Leather for a while. (For those of you not following this, Junie's five year old brain mistook "patent leather" for "Pat and Leather)." That was a rather ingenious touch, and there were some other examples of Amelia Bedeliaism throughout the book, but the shoe bit was my favorite.

The book I got my niece was a Target special twofer deal, and had another book written about 10 years later as the second half. Junie was in first grade in this one, and it was something about somebody smelling, if I recall. I didn't read it, because I had barely made it through the first one, was another 100 pages, and investing 45 minutes of my life into such a chore was asking too much, but I did check out four or five pages in the middle of it to see if Junie had shaped up any. She hadn't and showed all the signs of still being a terrible little urchin a whole year later. However, I did notice that she "ran" somewhere instead of "runned and runned" there in the first grade, so there's hope for progress.

I understand the attraction this kind of book has for kids. The situations and Junie's antics are humorous, and I can see how that would appeal to them, but I can't in good conscience recommend this book for anyone of that age. Brattiness aside, I feel the dumbed-down grammar in written form is too confounding at such an impressionable age. I won't be getting my niece any more of these books, but I also won't be discouraging her from reading them either. If she likes them, then she can rock on with them. I'm a fan of kids reading, but I'll spend my money on something else next time. Maybe Great Expectations by Dickens, or something.