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<\/a>\nBeverly Cleary, who turned 100 last week, has written more than three dozen children’s books over the course of her life, starting with her\u00a0first book, \u201cHenry Huggins\u201d, in 1950. Cleary was working as a\u00a0librarian when a group of little boys complained to her that he couldn\u2019t find any books\u00a0about “kids like us.” hence, Cleary, a hater of\u00a0didactic literature, birthed Henry Huggins, of Klickitat Street in Portland, Ore.<\/p>\n
Henry had a best friend named Beezus and a mischievous but lovable little sister Ramona Quimby. The earlier books in the series tend to be written from Henry’s point of view, and the later ones from Ramona’s; there is also one where the protagonist is Ramona’s sister and one told from the POV of Henry’s dog. I’ve read them all, most multiple times.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ramona was my favorite, naturally. I loved that\u00a0lovable, short-haired little weirdo. Beverly Cleary \u00a0took her all the way from nursery school to the fourth grade. Cleary says when she was writing Ramona, she took inspiration from a little girl who lived in the house behind her as a child.<\/p>\n “She had been sent to the neighborhood store for a pound of butter,” Cleary told NPR in 2010. “In those days, it was all in one piece, not in cubes. And she had opened the butter and was eating it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is exactly how I felt, 99% of the time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cGUTS GUTS GUTS!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I remember vividly Ramona’s fascination with sloppy Willa Jean and \u00a0Susan,\u00a0<\/em>who had hair like she read about in “old fashioned books”, \u00a0that was reddish gold and hung in ringlets that touched her shoulder, bouncing when she walked. I had the same fascinating with N <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n At 8-years old, I was mosquito-sized, messy, had a horrible\u00a0haircut and lived my\u00a0childhood with a kind of cartoony, preternatural intensity. I was weird and maybe even a little out of control. <\/p>\n Here I am leading some nonsense around the neighborhood, for no reason.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Beverly Cleary’s books are notable for their realistic depictions of ordinary children, of “kids like us”, and her \u00a0have remained weirdly \u00a0popular, even as recent children’s and young-adult books seem to be all driven by the dreaded fantasy, the supernatural, and magic. Cleary’s genius and charm is largely rooted in her intense absorption in the quotidian emotions and nonevents of kid life,\u00a0the way she fully and leisurely enters and articulates the inner life of \u00a0a kid’s mind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The early editions\u00a0depict a childhood world now outwardly gone, where the kids have the run of their humble, middle-class neighborhood, unsupervised by adults, and where dogs, unencumbered by leash laws, walk their kindergartners to school.\u00a0\u00a0In addition, the distinguished, offhandedly charming illustrations in the original editions, by Louis Darling, depict plainly dressed, crew-cut, unmistakably mid-20th-century children, and a Ramona who, true to Cleary\u2019s stroppy character, somewhat resembles a wild child. Naturally, they have been updated a lose a lot of the charm in the process. Now get off my lawn.<\/p>\n Now 100, Cleary is retired and so we won\u2019t be seeing another Ramona book. But Cleary thinks Ramona will \u201cbe all right\u201d when she grows up.<\/p>\n “She’ll do something creative. She liked to draw because her father liked to draw. Children often live out their parents’ frustrations. But I don’t know. I’d have to write the book to find out.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beverly Cleary, who turned 100 last week, has written more than three dozen children’s books over the course of her life, starting with her\u00a0first book, \u201cHenry Huggins\u201d, in 1950. Cleary was working as a\u00a0librarian when a group of little … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\nellie Olsens’ bouncy hair in the Little Hosue books. Ramona was fascinated by Susan’s hair and fantasized about the cartoon BOING! sound the hair would make when she it pulled one of Susan’s curls.
\nLabeled a “PEST” by her older sister Beezus (Ramona couldn\u2019t pronounce her real name, Beatrice, so now everyone called her Beezus, one reason she may had had a grudge against her little sister), Ramona Quimby is\u00a0plucky and talkative, prone to missteps and humiliations. She tried to crack a hard-boiled egg on her head at school, but the egg wasn’t hard-boiled, and she literally ended up with egg on her face. She drops out\u00a0of kindergarten, squeezes a tube of toothpaste down a sink, rides a tricycle around the living room while playing a single note on her harmonica, and makes tin-can stilts with a friend and\u00a0clatters around the neighborhood joyfully singing \u201cOne Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.\u201d She is impatient, ”\u00a0a girl who could not wait.”<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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