39 pages • 1 hour read
Beverly ClearyBeezus and Ramona
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
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Important Quotes
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Language and Sounds
From the onomatopoeia of Klickitat Street to alliterative names like Henry Huggins, Beverly Cleary infuses her text with sounds—sometimes melodious and appealing, sometimes discordant and clangorous. Cleary captures children’s experiences in the development of language. Before kids master spoken language, they build muscle memory and learn morphology by trying out phonemes. This can sound like gibberish to adults, but it is a necessary developmental step in language acquisition. Cleary exemplifies this in the way she explores Ramona’s use of her voice. She enjoys making sounds and creatively naming her dolls and toys: “Ramona thought Bendix was the most beautiful name in the world” (5). Cleary recreates the way children experiment and learn to use language as a crucial step in their journey of becoming literate. Although Ramona cannot read her favorite book, she enjoys listening while Beezus reads and mimics the sounds made by Scoopy the steam shovel: “‘G-r-r-r,’ said Scoopy, doing his best to sound like a bulldozer” (7). Beezus laments Ramona’s choice of books, but her sister chose the ones with the most interesting and powerful sounds.
Ramona is boisterous and sometimes makes noise just to annoy those around her: “Ramona, who was riding her tricycle around the house, singing, ‘Copycat, cappycot, copycat, cappycot,' over and over at the top of her voice, because she liked the sound of the words” (117). Even in this moment, Cleary shows Ramona experimenting with letter sounds and combinations, a skill that is a helpful step toward decoding words on the page. Although Beezus thinks Ramona is the loudest child she knows, when all the neighborhood kids show up for Ramona’s surprise party and Howie starts a parade, she sees that all children can create an ear-splitting racket by howling the same phrase repeatedly at the top of their lungs. Through the clamorous antics of Ramona and her friends, Cleary conveys the beauty and joy of children using sounds and language in their developmental journey.
Ramona’s Tricycle
A tricycle is often the first taste children get of the freedom of movement on wheels. As a precursor to a bicycle, which precedes a car, the trike offers children the opportunity to move about the world using the power of their own bodies. For children in that liminal space between being toddlers and starting elementary school, the tricycle marks an important step in the development of the freedom and exploration of childhood. When the narrator first introduces Ramona Quimby, she is riding the three-wheeled vehicle, not outside but indoors: “While Beezus was sewing, Ramona, holding a mouth organ in her teeth, was riding around the living room on her tricycle” (3). The moment establishes the contrast between the sisters, as Beezus prefers the quiet solitude of a chair and a book to Ramona’s cacophonous romp.
Ramona’s first indoor trike ride is innocuous and playful. However, when Henry Huggins visits and Ramona rams the trike into the table, toppling Beezus’s well-planned checker game, it becomes clear that Ramona’s wheels cease to be charmingly quirky and are now menacing. The image of a rambunctious child driving a tricycle indoors in a confined space succinctly articulates Ramona’s character. She is controlled chaos, the proverbial bull in a china shop, bent on having her way even if it means steamrolling over others. Driving her tricycle is a way for Ramona to exert her independence and move her body in a restricted space. Whether one agrees with her parents’ choice to allow her to ride inside or not, the author uses the image to symbolize Ramona’s unruliness and the utter pandemonium she leaves in her wake.
Books and Reading
As a child, Beverly Cleary struggled with literacy, and her teacher placed her in the low reading group. The injustice stuck with the author, and as an adult she set out to compose books that would appeal to young readers, helping them to naturally develop a love for reading. Books and reading feature prominently in Beezus and Ramona and become an important thread tying the sisters together. Ramona and Beezus’s personalities conflict in most situations, but a significant way that they find common ground is through reading. They bond over a mutual love of books and stories, and the author centers the calmer moments of the narrative around Beezus’s reading to Ramona. Having exhausted her mother and father with reading the same book repeatedly, Ramona turns to her older sister, imploring, “Beezus, will you read to me?” (114). Through Ramona’s simple request, Cleary paints an endearing scene of a young child exploring the joy of reading.
Chapter 1 features a visit to the library, where Ramona learns the process of borrowing books and the consequences of defacing one. Ramona’s love for The Littlest Steam Shovel and the character of Scoopy are familiar to anyone who has read a book repeatedly at the insistence of a young child or recalls wanting to hear the same story over and over in childhood. The anthropomorphized earth mover in Big Steve the Steam Shovel recalls the beloved childhood classic Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. Although Beezus’s taste in books is quite different from Ramona’s, she is still captivated by a good story, and one of her favorite activities is to climb in Father’s big chair and read her book. In the penultimate birthday chapter, Mother and Father gift her the book 102 Things to Do on a Rainy Day—which would have come in handy at Ramona’s surprise party in the preceding chapter. Although Father’s presence in the novel is limited, he is depicted as reading the newspaper after work. By having her characters exhibit a zeal for reading, Cleary centers on the importance of literacy and fostering a love of learning at an early age.
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