NEW YORK — Barbara Park, a former class clown who channeled her irreverence into books about grade schooler Junie B. Jones, has died. She was 66.

Park died Friday after a long battle with ovarian cancer, according to a statement released Sunday by Random House Books for Young Readers. She lived in Scottsdale, Ariz., with her husband, Richard, and has two sons.

Park wrote more than 30 illustrated chapter books about the smart-mouthed girl with an ungrammatical opinion of everybody — her parents, her teachers, her friends and her classmate and enemy for life, May, who is so mean she won’t even acknowledge Junie’s middle initial, which stands for Beatrice: “Only I don’t like Beatrice. I just like B and that’s all.”