What a Pest, Ramona

Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary, 1968.

A smiling adult voice narrates the story. This could be patronizing, but rather is understanding and warm. Ramona didn’t mean to be a pest, she wanted to be good. The narrator has tremendous insight into a child’s psyche, using everyday, even mundane experiences that might seem (to an adult) out of proportion, but are huge things in the life of a child.

Cleary uses tidy plotting and gradually escalating tension involving dynamics of relationships and the sheer bigness of the world to a little girl so that the reader truly sees it though a child’s eyes. Love and respect for this little pint-sized pest fills every page.

There was an eeriness in my own experience as a reader since I dimly recall reading this book at age 7 or 8, so throughout the whole was an odd sensation of déjà vu. I still recall chasing little Jonathan Van Dop around the playground with a worm, demanding he marry me.

Is Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney Worth a Fight?

You know you're a kiddie lit geek when you're arguing with an eight-year-old over who gets to read the library books first. St. Nick snagged this one, I sneaked it while he was playing his Nintendo DS, and he sneaked it back later. I, gracefully I think, allowed him to finish it (see, I have learned to take turns) and then I got my chance to read it.

The illustrations, the voice, the story all catapulted me into life as a skinny middle school boy. This is possibly the most fun I've had with a book since I slipped Captain Underpants into the library bag (that one I wouldn't allow Nicholas to read until I'd "previewed and approved" it).

Ultimately, this is a story about friendship and integrity, and here the protagonist is an antihero of sorts - modeling these qualities (realistically) via negativa. All Greg's plans to do evil, be popular, avoid responsibility, backfire. But it's not a downer - the book is hysterically funny. Greg joins the school's Wizard of Oz production as a tree, in hopes of beaning "Dorothy" with an apple; he becomes a safety patrol officer to get out of pre-algebra. So many of Greg's great ideas are horrendously and innocently flawed. Much like the child I had to ask for permission to read his book.

The same child who couldn't understand, as previously mentioned, why his Orchestra Instruments teacher thought the drawing he did during class was inappropriately ghoulish ...

"You don't think an alien pulling his head off is a little too scary?"

Exasperated sigh and eye roll followed by, "He's not pulling his head off, Mom. He's putting his head back on."

Ah. I see.

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Miss Ching Ching

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Miss Ching Ching