Ramona the Pest
Ramona has been waiting years just to get to kindergarten, and once she’s there she wants everyone to know it. She pretends to snore during quiet time to prove what a good rester she is. She yanks on prissy classmate Susan’s curls – not to be mean, but because their “boinginess” is so tempting. And she gleefully plays the baddest witch on Halloween.
Big sister Beezus and others call her Ramona the Pest. Perhaps they don’t understand that a littler person sometimes has to be “a little bit noisier and a little bit more stubborn in order to be noticed at all.”
Author
Beverly Cleary
Series
Ramona Quimby, Book 2
Pages
211
AR Level
5.1
Book Review
We continue following Ramona as she moves from nursery school to Kindergarten. This books shows the joys and tribulations of entering Kindergarten in a “real” school. Ramona loves her new teacher, Miss Binney, and desperately wants her to like her. She gets to be the center of attention while showing off her doll during Show and Tell. Ramona rigs her tricycle to have only two wheels, like the older children. This is a story of a typical girl heading to school for the first time and trying to fit in and stand out at the same time.
What We Liked
Ramona has ups and downs in Kindergarten, just like any other kid. She has to learn to get along with the other children in her class, like her neighbor, Howie, her crush, Davie, and her nemesis, Susan. We see the joy of getting new red boots. Ramona learns to write her name with a kitty cat Q, which reminds me to putting hearts over all of my i’s in grade school. We see her despair when Ramona drops out of Kindergarten because her teacher doesn’t like her. My youngest was concerned that Ramona would never go back to school and learn “important stuff like reading”.
The normal things that Ramona does is what endears the story to us, even many years after it was written. My 3rd grader was nostalgic for Kindergarten when listening to this book.
Audiobook
We listened to the Ramona the Pest audiobook in the car mainly driving home from school. That gives us time to listen to most of a chapter. As in the Beezus and Ramona, this book was read by Stockard Channing. The audiobook is 2 hrs 35min in length, which takes us a couple of weeks to finish listening.
Movie Tie-In
There is a 2010 G-rated movie Ramona and Beezus that is based upon this book series. It is a cute movie, but does not follow the plot of this or any of the other books in the series.
The Verdict
Bring on first grade. Ramona the Brave is next.
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