Cleary published her most recent tale, the delightful Ramona’s World, seven years ago, at the tender age of 83. Imagine if Henry James had drafted episodes of Leave It to Beaver. They’re as funny as any of her books they’re also stories in which she really shows off her ability to unpeel childhood’s social and emotional anxieties. To this reader’s mind, her twin masterpieces are Beezus and Ramona (1955) and Ramona the Pest (1968). That was her lone Newberry Award winner-a prize she probably should have won a half-dozen times. Mouse, Socks the cat, and Leigh Botts, the lonely California boy whose reluctant correspondence fills the pages of Cleary’s 1983 Dear Mr. She has 39 books under her belt, chronicling the gentle, witty adventures of Ramona, her big sister, Beezus, their friend Henry Huggins (the star of Cleary’s first book), his dog, Ribsy, and so many other equally indelible characters, including Ellen Tebbits, Otis Spofford, Ralph S. Measured in boring grown-up years, however, Cleary is merely 90, having reached that milestone this past April 12. So in Ramona years her creator, the peerless children’s novelist Beverly Cleary, must be, well, ageless. By 1999 she had finally made it to fourth grade, celebrating her 10th birthday. Ramona Quimby, the notorious pest of Klickitat Street, was a preschooler in 1950.
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