‘Let’s get started,’ said Ramona, running to the garage and returning with two big rocks.
‘A bulldozer was smashing some old houses so somebody could build a shopping center, and the man told me I could pick up broken bricks.’ Her friendship with Howie offers one of many examples: Before there were terms like “gender nonbinary,” “gender nonconforming” or “genderqueer,” there was Ramona. She’s an outlier of school standards and gender expectations. So exactly where does Cleary’s Ramona fit? She doesn’t. Then, in the culmination of the scene: “Ramona clenched her fists and took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to say a bad word!’ she shouted with a stamp of her foot.” She wanted to do something terrible that would shock her whole family, something that would make them sit up and take notice. ‘You don’t have to be so noisy about it,’ said Mrs. Take, for example, the time Ramona’s parents are disappointed by her report card: In fact, Cleary’s Ramona doesn’t just challenge the assumption that readers must learn “from” and “with” fictional characters one of Ramona’s distinguishing characteristics is rebelliousness. Getty Images/Time SloanĬleary once told PBS that her fans love Ramona “because she does not learn to be a better girl.” She went on to explain what inspired her to create Ramona’s character: “I was so annoyed with the books in my childhood because children always learned to be better children, and in my experience, they didn’t.” With a writing career beginning in the early 1950s, Cleary directly challenged such a notion.Ĭleary was a 2003 recipient of a National Medal of Arts, which honors artists and patrons of the arts.
Though readers have, at least since the early 20th century, generally let go of this expectation for authors who write for adults, the expectation persists for those who write for children. Reading was expected to be, in the words of Horace, both “dulce” (literally sweet, or enjoyable) and “utile” (literally useful, or instructive). This expectation was set in the 18th century when it was assumed that the modern novel, newly developed, would teach as well as please. But what is it that makes Cleary’s characters so enduring? Novels that teachĪs a scholar of 18th-century British literature, I recognize the pressure on novelists to teach children through their writing. As a mother of twin boys, I have been surprised at how her writing continues to resonate. Many fans love Cleary’s work for a lifetime – first as young children, then as adults. The book is “Beezus and Ramona.” Most readers appreciate Ramona’s arguments, admiring the innocence, the free-spiritedness, the insight that inspires her to take a whole carton of apples and indulge in one first bite after another, only ever tasting “the reddest part.” The author of this scene is Beverly Cleary, who died on March 25, 2021, at the age of 104.
0 kommentar(er)
