Ramona Quimbly, Age 8

Title: Ramona Quimbly, Age 8

Author: Beverly Cleary

Genre: Novel

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright Date: 1992

Pages in Book: 208 pages

Reading Level: 9-11 years

Summary: Ramona Quimbly is a little eight year old who has everything wrong happen to her. She finally is old enough to ride the bus all by herself. She gets into her third grade classroom, and instantly connects with her teacher Mrs. Whaley. One day, she brings what she thinks is a hard-boiled egg to class and decides to crack the shell on her forehead. Unfortunately for her, the egg isn’t hard-boiled and the yolk runs all over her. She over hears her teacher saying some not nice things about her, and she’s crushed. Later on, she and her sister are forced to make dinner together, and since some of the ingredients are out, they substitute. This proves to not go quite as well as they planned, as soon as Ramona throws up in front of everyone, something that she thinks is the most embarrassing thing alive. The family has a lot of problems, and at the end of the story, Ramona’s dad takes them all out to dinner. They find out that a nice man has paid for their meals, after he asks Ramona if she’s been nice to her mom.

Reaction: I thought this book was rather cute! Wanting to be a school teacher, I liked how the teacher and Ramona had a connection. I also liked how even though several bad things happened to her, she was always the bigger person. She had so many adventures as a little girl and it made me a little envious of her. I also liked how at the end of the book, the author showed that the family was all fighting, and having trouble, but in the end, it all worked out. I made the connection that every family has problems and no matter what, at the end of the day, your family is always there for you and you can always depend on them.

Recommendation: I’d recommend this to any child. I think I would even recommend this to children younger than the recommended years, because it’s a book that the children’s parents can read to them as well.

Potential Problems/Conflicts: I didn’t have any big problems with this story, but I did have a little problem with the fact that Ramona thought her teacher was talking bad about her, behind her back. Teachers, I don’t feel, should be talking down upon their students, and if they decide to…I feel that they should do that away from the school area.