![]() ![]() ![]() I still find Ellen Tebbits easier to relate to than Ramona, decades after making their acquaintances. The pest Ramona Geraldine Quimby may be Cleary’s most famous character and, judging by some of the recent posts, the one many women like best. Her Klickitat novels from the 1950s and mid-1960s reflect another America, but have shifting values invalidated her attempt to find common ground through the depiction of ordinary anxieties children experience daily at home and school? Things like, will something interesting happen to me? Or how am I going to hide something embarrassing from my peers? These two concerns play out humorously in Cleary’s stories time after time without lapsing into cruelty or condescension. Early in her career Beverly Cleary said she wanted to write about “universal human emotions,” but the idea that there are emotions all readers can relate to, regardless of race, gender, and class, seems hopelessly optimistic, perhaps even dangerously dated now. ![]()
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