Aside from James Howe and his brilliant work on an American Mid-West family and their vampire rabbit, Beverly Cleary's stories were my literary life as a kid.







Ramona the Dreamer, Beezus the Stoic, and Henry the Hapless, and their idealistic neighborhood scamp antics. Such a simple premise, but Cleary delivered it so well in every single book she ever wrote about them, and she could touch on every specific subject you could think of revolving around just one or all three characters, from Ramona confronting a rabid dog on the street and bravely staring it down until it walks away, from Henry's frantic search over the state for his lost dog Ribsy. And it still managed to keep me interested every page. In the dark day and age of my adulthood, revisiting all of them a year or so ago and concluding with this recent film adaptation tonight has reminded me that I've still got it. My inner child, that is.


It's called Ramona and Beezus, made in 2010.




I like my snarkiness about bad movies and video games, but let me serious for a moment. Honestly the movie moved my heart. If only life in the real world were this simple and kindly. If I come to start a family half as awesome as the Quimbys later on in life, I'll consider myself among the specially blessed. You know I must be in a good mood if even seeing Selena Gomez in a movie doesn't piss me off. Right now, I am feeling most pleased, like I just slowly dined on delicious bread pudding and experienced Chrono Trigger again like it was first time ever playing an RPG while lounging in a hammock held up by two beautiful angels underneath the cloudless sunshine.

Please, look it up on eBay or Amazon if you ever get the urge to read like a fifth grader again and you have five bucks to spare. Here's some more detailed information ->

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramona_%28novel_series%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Huggins


It would make most guys my age groan loudly with disgust at such care-bears pure-hearted wholesomeness, but some things I'll just never grow too old for.

You might know Beverly Cleary, right? I mean, she wrote The Mouse and the Motorcycle. At least in my neck of the woods through grade school, everyone knew that book.



Honestly, I wish I could thank Beverly Cleary for having encouraged me to read more as a kid by writing like a total boss. These statements from Wikipedia say it better than me ->

Twentieth-Century Children's Writers says "Beverly Cleary's impact as a children's writer cannot be overestimated." It goes on to cite "her extraordinary talent in creating memorable young characters whose exuberant spirit and zest for life attract young and old readers alike."
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And you guys? What were some books you just couldn't get enough of in your earlier days?

The Satanic Bible

There's actually this one series of books that I vaguely remember and, unfortunately, can't remember the name of. But these stories were always about out-of-control kids, and the parents would call in this one nanny who would find some way to make the kids be good using some sort of trickery. I wanna say magic? It was a different family every time, but the same nanny. She'd come in, fix the kids but good, then move on somewhere else. Unless someone knows the stories I'm talking about just from that vague explanation, though, I'll probably never find out what those stories were. I can't even remember any specific plots.

Ah, I knew it was something like that! My mind kept leaning towards "Miss Piggly-Wink", but that never turned up the right search results on Google. Thanks, appreciate it. =)

Thank you for this post SK. You brought back a ton of good memories.

You're welcome. Are you saying you were a fan of Cleary's books too?

Hmm... I LOVED reading, but I don't remember the books I read as a kid. They were just books with compilations of stories, but I remember having tons of Disney comics (in spanish)