Ramona Quimby
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- For the children's television series based on the Ramona novels, see here.
Ramona Geraldine Quimby is a character from a series of novels by Beverly Cleary. She starts out in the Henry Huggins series as the pestering little sister of Henry's friend Beatrice, called "Beezus" by Ramona and her family. She was given a larger role in the novel Beezus and Ramona. Then the series concentrated on her from kindergarten onward. Ramona is a rambunctious imaginative girl who is misunderstood by others. She wants to grow up quickly and hates being called a baby.
She is a talented artist but is bad at spelling. She says herself that she gets excited very easily, unlike her friend Howie. She sometimes dresses in unique costumes on Halloween and during a Christmas play to get attention. Yet she never wants to hide inside her costume. She wants people to know that the "baddest witch in the world" and the black-nosed sheep is Ramona.
Ramona also enjoys making noise, whether it's pounding bricks on the concrete with Howie in their game Brick Factory or clunking down the street on tin can stilts.
She has a worn doll with green hair called Chevrolet in the early books. In Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona admits that she always thought Chevrolet was the most beautiful name in the world and doesn't understand why the adults are laughing. Also in Ramona and Her Mother, we meet a stuffed elephant named Ella Funt. Ramona tries to spend time with her mother while sewing pants for Ella Funt, but discovers that pants don't fit elephants very well! Other Ramona toys include her tricycle, floppy bunny ears, and her rubber doll, Bendix. Bendix is the doll that Ramona shoves in the oven on Beezus' 10th birthday, thereby managing to ruin TWO birthday cakes in one day during Beezus and Ramona.
In the later books, like Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona and Her Father, Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Ramona Forever and Ramona's World, Ramona is a bit more mature, being in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades. She starts liking a boy named Danny, or Yard Ape, who is mean at the start, but starts being nice to Ramona. In Ramona's World, Danny likes Ramona. Ramona's enemy is Susan, who Ramona thinks is a goody-goody. When Ramona starts 4th grade in Ramona's World, she becomes best friends with a new girl, Daisy Kidd. Ramona thinks liking or not liking her teachers is important, and in 3rd grade, she starts out not liking Ms. Whaley, but ends up liking her. Same with her 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Meacham. In Ramona Forever, Ramona gets a baby sister, named Roberta Day Quimby. In Ramona Forever, her cat Picky-Picky dies.
[edit] Ramona's age
When Ramona started out in the Henry Huggins books, she was 4. She was also this age in Beezus and Ramona. She is 5 years old in Ramona the Pest. In Ramona the Brave, Ramona is 6 years old. In Ramona and Her Mother and Ramona and Her Father, Ramona is 7 years old. In Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Ramona Forever, Ramona is 8 years old. In a book that is possibly her last, which is Ramona's World, Ramona starts out 9 years old, and turns 10 at the end.
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