What a Pest, Ramona
Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary, 1968.
A smiling adult voice narrates the story. This could be patronizing, but rather is understanding and warm. Ramona didn’t mean to be a pest, she wanted to be good. The narrator has tremendous insight into a child’s psyche, using everyday, even mundane experiences that might seem (to an adult) out of proportion, but are huge things in the life of a child.
Cleary uses tidy plotting and gradually escalating tension involving dynamics of relationships and the sheer bigness of the world to a little girl so that the reader truly sees it though a child’s eyes. Love and respect for this little pint-sized pest fills every page.
There was an eeriness in my own experience as a reader since I dimly recall reading this book at age 7 or 8, so throughout the whole was an odd sensation of déjà vu. I still recall chasing little Jonathan Van Dop around the playground with a worm, demanding he marry me.
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Rebecca has been writing since childhood, her first book about a kitten published between homemade cardboard covers in second grade. Although she studied religion and philosophy in university, she continued writing, earning an MFA from Hamline University and publishing multiple picture books (no longer with homemade covers) and a collection of poetry with a variety of New York and independent publishers. She has also published a wide array of fiction, essays, and poetry in magazines and journals and photographs for Getty Images. She balances writing with homeschooling the younger of her six children, launching her young adults, church activities, and overseeing a small flock of chickens in rural West Michigan.
In honor of a very special day, I thought I'd revive this old post about a book I found, um, intriguing, with some interesting asides...