Junie B. Jones

I'm a big fan of the first sentence/paragraph of books. As in a BIG fan. And I have been for quite some time.

Some of my favorites, in no particular order, are:

"My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die." This is followed by the equally great, if not better, second sentence, "I counted." ~Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta (Because come on! That's so intense!)

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." ~Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Because sassy Jane is sassy. Side note, I didn't really like "classics" because various reasons, but then now I really like them, pretty much due to Jane Austen. She's golden.)

"Who's there?" ~Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Which is technically a first line, but still... And because, not only is this a great play written by a great man, but because I feel like this is a question every human being has asked, albeit I know Shakespeare was cleverly using the changing of the guards as a way to introduce the setting as well as the whole fatherly ghost figure thing and not, specifically in this instance, as a way to comment on the questions that plague humanity, so I'm totally taking this out of context, but whatever.)

"It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened." This is followed by a great second sentence, "No." And then the third sentence, which really drives in my point about this particular example which I will explain in a minute because I like things to be structured similarly, "Wrong word, Jonas thought." ~The Giver by Lois Lowry (Because I love words and the fact that Jonas pauses and takes the time to contemplate exactly which word to use in this instance to describe his feelings is beautiful. Another side note, I incidentally didn't like this book the first time I read it. I have no idea why, I liked it a lot the second time I read it...)

"The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath." This is followed by, "Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down." ~An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (Because that's hilarious and speaks to me personally.)

and

"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over again, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death." ~The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Because talk about attention grabbing. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that THIS BOOK IS GLORIOUS.)

I was thinking about this (my love of the beginning of books) and I realized why I love them so much.

Story time.

Once upon a time do you remember the Junie B. Jones books? I LOVED THOSE BOOKS. They are probably in my top 5 favorite books of childhood, although that idea just came to me, so I haven't really thought it through and who knows, maybe 5 other books will outrank them. Point is, they're great and they all start the same way:

"My name is Junie B. Jones. The B stands for Beatrice. Except I don't like Beatrice. I just like B and that's all."

And I loved this and the fact that it started every one of those books so much that I would tell people whenever the chance arose (as I wasn't much of a 'center of attention' type of kid, this primarily meant whenever I had one of the books in my hand and someone said something about it or whenever I was asked what books I liked - basically whenever someone else brought it up, unless it was my family, they probably got pretty tired of me doing this.... I'm hard core digressing, aren't I? Where was I? Oh yeah.) that every one of these books started with "My name is Junie B. Jones. The B stands for Beatrice. Except I don't like Beatrice. I just like B and that's all." I had this memorized, which looking back doesn't seem like a big deal, but I suck at memory and so especially back then it was quite the accomplishment.

And that's how I came to love the first sentences/paragraphs of books. Because they remind me of my childhood. The End.