Spunky Seven-Year-Old Saves Her Family (Or Tries To)

Ramona and Her Father finds Ramona Quimby in second grade, though this volume barely makes mention of what is going on at school. The focus here is on her family and on Ramona’s worries that she is the only happy member left. The predominant source of stress in the household is the fact that her father lost his job. Now he spends every day at home, growing more and more irritable as he waits in vain for a job offer. Her mother is nearly as ornery, since she works longs hours every day at a doctor’s office. Her sister Beezus is entering into “that difficult age” and beginning to display disagreeable behavior; Ramona is startled to find Beezus getting into trouble as much as her. Adding to Beezus’ troubles is the fact that she must take Creative Writing, a subject she has always hated because she feels it requires more imagination than she has. Not even Picky-picky, the family cat, is happy, since the loss of Mr. Quimby’s job meant major budgetary cutbacks, including switching to the cheapest brand of cat food.

Little of Ramona’s famously awful behavior remains in this book, though her creativity and determination get her into trouble a few times. All she wants is to make her family, and most especially her once-so-jovial father, happy again. Early in the book, she decides she can save her family by landing herself in a television commercial and earning a million dollars, but after the practice crown she makes out of briars becomes entangled in her hair, taking hours to remove, she gives up on the bread-winning idea, uplifted by her father's assurance that he would never trade her for a million dollars. That is only the start of the troubles she faces in this book, however.

Her central battle in this book is a prolonged campaign, aided and initiated by Beezus, to convince Mr. Quimby to give up smoking. Since losing his job, he smokes more than ever, and the girls are increasingly concerned about his health. Mr. Quimby does not respond well to the barrage of anti-smoking signs and messages that begin popping up throughout the house, and Ramona begins to question the nobility of her efforts and wonder whether they will cause her father to stop loving her. Ramona has always been a "Daddy's girl," and the book allows for some wonderfully tender moments that affirm the fact that while outside pressures may make Mr. Quimby unusually cross, he will never abandon his love for his second daughter.

In the midst of these family troubles, Cleary focuses on the holidays of Halloween and Christmas, each of which comes complete with its own combination of cheer and calamity. Ramona matures considerably, often substituting self-centeredness with empathy for her family members. For the first time, she begins to understand some of the problems that come with growing up and must come to accept that no family is perfect and sometimes even grown-ups encounter situations that are difficult to handle. Like Cleary's other books, this is written in simple language that makes it accessible to children the age of the protagonist, but the style is engaging enough to entrap even adults. Its nearly 200 pages, broken up into seven chapters, are easily manageable for a child and can be read by an adult in two or three hours. A Newbery Honor book, Ramona and her Father is a fine addition to the series and one of the best of the Ramona books.