Ramona the Pest

Ramona is a unique little girl, one who is unlike the rest of her peers—thus, her reputation as a “pest.” Despite that she sometimes gets into trouble, Ramona likes being different. When Ramona draws her Q’s in her own special way—“Ramona style,” as she calls it—it brings her great pleasure. No matter what others say about her, and no matter how much trouble she gets into due to her affinity for mischief, Ramona embraces her individuality.

Ramona has a vivid imagination. She wants to be “interesting,” and strives to make things interesting for others. In Chapter 2, Ramona presents her green-haired doll named Chevrolet to the class. In Chapter 3, while learning to write her name, Ramona admires the uniqueness of her own name: “She doubted if anyone in kindergarten had such an interesting name” (77). In Chapter 5, Ramona “trip-traps” in her new shoes, prancing around and pretending she is a pony and then a billy goat (118). Throughout the book, Ramona’s cannot control her imagination—she sees the world in an unusual and interesting way. 

At the same time, Ramona wants a deeper kind of acceptance from everyone but from her teacher Miss Binney, most of all. In Chapter 8, Ramona is devastated at the idea that Miss Binney is angry with her. At the end of the chapter, when Ramona realizes that Miss Binney is not mad at her, Ramona is overjoyed that Miss Binney “understood” her (210). Because Ramona is a unique little girl with a wild imagination, she is sometimes alienated and finds herself getting into trouble. However, as she explains in Chapter 7, Ramona did not consider herself a pest: “People who called her a pest did not understand that a littler person sometimes had to be a little bit noisier and a little bit more stubborn in order to be noticed at all” (175). Throughout the book, Ramona expresses a desire to be understood by others, why she sometimes behaves in the way she does.