Beezus and Ramona

Cleary, Beverly. Beezus and Ramona. Illustrated by Louis Darling. Harperfestival, reissue 2010 (c. 1955).  Paperback $5.99 , ISBN 978-0061914614

What’s it about?

Nine-year-old Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby has a problem: an exasperating little sister, four-year-old troublemaker named Ramona, who does everything loudly and boisterously.  No other nine-year-old Beezus knows has a sister quite like Ramona.

Find out more:

Ramona Quimby can be quite a pest, as her older sister Beezus can attest. Beezus (aka Beatrice) is a quiet, contemplative child.  Her younger sister’s antics often disrupt her life, from the time Ramona locks her friend’s dog in the bathroom to the time she sits in during Beezus’ art class.  It’s the last straw for Beezus, however, when Ramona ruins not one, but two birthday cakes on Beezus’ tenth birthday. The first time, Ramona decided to drop all the eggs in the house (shells and all) into the batter. The second time, Ramona is playing Hansel and Gretel with her doll Bendix. She sticks her doll in the oven, where it falls into the cake and scorches.  Beezus feels just awful, and it is not just because her cakes were spoiled. She feels that she is a horrible human being for sometimes not loving Ramona. When she blurts this out at her birthday dinner, instead of being shocked, her family understands. Her mother and her aunt can relate—and tell her all about the mischief they got into when they were kids. Beezus feels optimistic that one day she and Ramona will look back on Ramona’s obnoxious behavior and laugh.

Beezus and Ramona is hilarious. Cleary does a wonderful job of capturing a rowdy four-year-old’s behavior and making it more than sheer brattiness. Of course, there are moments when Ramona is just bratty, but what makes Ramona memorable is the way she thinks. She hides in the basement and eats just one bite out of dozens of apples. Why? Because the first bite is tastes the best! Even Beezus can’t refute this fact. When Ramona secretly invites her entire nursery school class over one day to have a party, she explains to her mother that when she asks, she doesn’t get to do things. When Ramona locks Henry’s dog Ribsy in the bathroom, she does so because she was giving him a time out (he ate her cookie).  Cleary also does an excellent job of painting a sympathetic portrait of Beezus and her feelings of being overshadowed and frustrated. The pen and ink illustrations by Louis Darling are excellent, and accent the humor and deftness of Cleary’s storytelling.

Genre: Realistic Fiction, Humor

Reading level: 5^th grade

Interest level: Grades 3-5

Subjects: Sibling relationships, Pre-school-aged children

Read-alikes:

Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing