Beezus and Ramona
Written by Beverly Cleary
Narrated by Stockard Channing
4/5
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About this audiobook
Newbery Award winner Beverly Cleary delivers a humorous portrayal of the ups and downs of sisterhood. Both the younger and older siblings of the family will enjoy this book.
Having a little sister like four-year-old Ramona isn’t always easy for Beezus Quimby. With a wild imagination, disregard for order, and an appetite for chaos, Ramona makes it hard for Beezus to be the responsible older sister she knows she ought to be…especially when Ramona threatens to ruin Beezus’s birthday party. Will Beezus find the patience to handle her little sister before Ramona turns her big day into a complete disaster?
""An important reminder of the good that can come when you throw yourself fully into any situation and draw outside the lines,"" says Brightly in their article ""12 Girls from Fiction Who Are Their Own Heroes.""
Beverly Cleary
Beverly Cleary is one of America's most beloved authors. As a child, she struggled with reading and writing. But by third grade, after spending much time in her public library in Portland, Oregon, she found her skills had greatly improved. Before long, her school librarian was saying that she should write children's books when she grew up. Instead she became a librarian. When a young boy asked her, ""Where are the books about kids like us?"" she remembered her teacher's encouragement and was inspired to write the books she'd longed to read but couldn't find when she was younger. She based her funny stories on her own neighborhood experiences and the sort of children she knew. And so, the Klickitat Street gang was born! Mrs. Cleary's books have earned her many prestigious awards, including the American Library Association's Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, presented to her in recognition of her lasting contribution to children's literature. Dear Mr. Henshaw won the Newbery Medal, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Ramona and Her Father have been named Newbery Honor Books. Her characters, including Beezus and Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, and Ralph, the motorcycle-riding mouse, have delighted children for generations.
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Titles in the series (9)
Beezus and Ramona Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ramona the Pest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ramona and Her Father Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ramona the Brave Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ramona and Her Mother Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ramona's World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ramona Quimby, Age 8 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ramona Forever Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ramona Quimby Audio Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for Beezus and Ramona
1,139 ratings57 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title to be a wonderful and entertaining book about the relationship between sisters. It explores the idea that sisters don't always have to love each other, but still highlights the love and bond between them. The book is filled with funny moments and relatable characters. Overall, readers love this book and highly recommend it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Like ? sisters ?You Got It Ramona I Love It ? Thank you Ramona
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I like this book because it is so very funny and entertaining. I would consider it a classic. Very entertaining.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This a good book and I love it so much
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved this book because the sisters are just like us!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5ok i love ramona books they are so so so good
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love it it made me so happy at the end???
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I thought it was a wonderful book! But I think that sisters should always love each other. I don’t think that beezus’s mother and aunt Beatrice should have told her that she should not have to always have to love her sister. I don’t think you should be forced to love your sister but she is a little girl!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When beezus learned that she doesn’t have to love Ramona all the time
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A must read for a older or younger brother or sister
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I really liked this book because Ramona is really annoying and she likes to imagine things. Also, Beezus is bossy and always gets angry at her. It just has so many funny parts in it. I just couldn’t stop listening to it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A 1955 children's novel.A nine-year-old is annoyed with her four-year-old sister.C+ (Okay).It's harmlessly pleasant, and even has a laugh or two, but it doesn't give me any reason to care about it. It probably doesn't help that Beezus, the uptight older sibling, is hard to relate to, since she gets upset whenever something entertaining happens. But mostly I think it's just because they're realistic children, doing ordinary things. Not for me.(Oct. 2022)
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I suppose that it's possible for an older sister to feel guilt because of not loving her younger sibling all the time, but it doesn't ring any bells. Now feeling inadequate for not receiving praise for something the little darling does, yep, that one hits. The resolutions are a bit overly sugared.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've been reading this series with my 4-year-old via audio and it's so much fun. She loves hearing about Ramona's misadventures. From an unexpected party to a birthday cake for Beezus, this book offered some great lessons for a big sister who is adjusting to a whirlwind little sister.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading about Ramona's little mischievous activities really made me angry but overall good book 9/10 lol
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So much fun; I know lots of kids can relate to these two!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beatrice Quimby's little sister is so annoying. She's loud and boisterous, messy and impatient -- and she bestowed the nickname "Beezus" on Beatrice, back when she couldn't pronounce names correctly. There are times when Beezus doesn't feel like she loves her little sister, and that troubles her -- shouldn't sisters love each other all the time?
I'm a fellow oldest sibling, but I've never had a lot of sympathy for Beezus in this book. To me, she comes across as whiny. While I can sympathize with having a rambunctious younger sibling, I never feel a lot of affection for Beezus in this book. After this, the series shifts focus to Ramona, who is a much more dynamic character. Poor Beezus -- she gets the short end of the stick in this series. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The moral of Beezus and Ramona is that it's okay not to love your sister ~all~ the time. And that's a good thing, because Ramona is quite the little brat. My sympathies were all with Beezus, almost 10, and having to care for her frequently horrible 4 year old sister so much of the time. But of course, they both love each other, and that's plain throughout the book. But they are almost 6 years apart in age, and have wildly different personalities.
Each chapter is pretty much its own little short story. Other than having the same characters and themes there isn't much linking one chapter to the next. In each story, Ramona finds a new way to behave dreadfully and Beezus has to figure out how to deal with it.
I got the impression that when Beverly Cleary wrote this first book in the series, way back in 1955, she had Beezus in mind as the main character, but judging from the titles, the other books in the series evidently follow Ramona more closely. Hopefully she's not quite as horrid as she grows older in later books. Since two of the latter ones won Newbery Honor awards, I assume the series improves. (Not that this is a bad book, but it's not a great one either.) - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read this with my daughter - we're ready for the movie.
She's anxious to read more Ramona! YEA! - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another one of my favorite book series - you can't stay mad or stay away from Ramona Quimby for very long.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I think the writing in this book is seriously outdated. I read these books when I was younger, but I found that I didn't really have any memory of whether or not I thought they were any good. I think the reason I had a lack of memory is because this book is simply not memorable. There are so moments that are fun but overall this book isn't anything special. I think Beverly Cleary has other books that a so much better.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don't review every book I read--some small tomes I'll just run through to kill time, or sate my curiosity, and then never give them a second thought. This was going to be one of those books, until I laughed out loud. What had happened was that I was killing time in my daughter's second grade classroom. (She's a teacher, by the way, not a student.) I noticed this book in the classroom library, and since I had fond memories of reading Ramona the Pest when I was a kid, I figured I'd read a bit of this instead of the book I had in my backpack. Anyway, Beezus and Ramona is about Beezus Quimby, a nine year old girl in 1950s Oregon, and the troubles she has with her four year old sister Ramona. At first I enjoyed reading a book written in the 1950s--a different world in many ways. Soon enough, my enjoyment was garnished with chuckles over Ramona's antics. She is the chaos bringer, the one who manages to see and act in the world in a way that is different from the average person and who is quite disconcerting to those, like Beezus, who expect a certain order to their lives. Anyway, a few chapters in I got to the laugh out loud joke--an incident which revealed to me that not only is Ms. Cleary able to write about crazy shenanigans, but she has a clever wit in her tool kit as well. So from that point, I knew that I wanted to finish reading the book (easily done) and tell you all to check it out.
--J. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What crazy thing will that impossible little sister do next?! Join Beezus as she gets annoyed with, and sometimes even freaked out by, Ramona's shenanigans. This page turner will have you hurrying to the bookstore for the next book in the series, eager to find out what terrible naughtiness Ramona is up to now. Will Beezus ever get a moment's peace? You'll have to read it to find out!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My little one and I have been thoroughly enjoying this series for bedtime reading. (My daughter refers to this sisterly duo as "Beezus and Fermona" lol.) Reading them is a fun nostalgia trip for me, recalling not only the days when I read them as a child, but also the days when children had a lot more freedom than they do today.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the first in Cleary's series of Ramona books. I listened to it with my daughter at bedtimes. In many ways my four-year old daughter IS Ramona Quimby, creative and mischief and sometimes seems indifferent to the chaos she causes. So this is a very true to life book, and it feels oddly contemporary despite being published in 1955. Unlike later books, this story is told from the point of view of Beezus who has to deal with a little sister who wants to hear an annoying book about steam shovel, colors in her library book, looks her friend's dog in the bathroom, invites neighborhood children to a party that no one else in the family knew about, and destroys not one but two of Beezus' birthday cakes. Beezus has to deal with the guilt that sometimes she doesn't love Ramona. Near the end of the book <spoiler alert> Beezus mother and Aunt Beatrice reminisce about having a similarly contentious relationship as children but are able to laugh about it as adults, giving Beezus some comfort. It's a pretty brilliant book and I'm glad I'm getting to hear it now having missed it as a child.
Favorite Passages:
I am too a Merry Sunshine! - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A simply marvelous series that is only finally beginning to be dated just a tiny bit. Will always be worthy, though.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I can't believe Cleary wrote a whole series about this obnoxious child. Now I know where the Real Housewives of New Jersey came from.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This suck such a fun, playful read. Ramona is adorable and annoying in all the ways a sister can be! I spent to much time laughing through this.
Your really feel for Beezus and the caught in the middle dilemma she is in but I can't help but cheer on the little sister. Her antics are fantastic! It made me grateful for the age gap between my brothers and I. I didn't have to deal with as much of this. Amusing as she was, Ramona was also a little terror that could drive anyone crazy.
Great lessons for kids in this book. From learning right and wrong, to how to apologize, acceptance and what it really means to be a sister. I think kids can gain a lot from reading this book Especially if they have a sibling (older or younger).
The relationships in this family are very real. Both the adults behavior and the kids. It was easy to relate to the different characters. The main thing that doesn't fit in todays world is the freedom and "safety" young children have. There is a distinct lack of adult supervision.
Over great for elementary kids to read and enjoy. Lots of fun! - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The best way I can describe my thoughts about this book is that it is simply okay. I really like the depth of the characters and how they grow throughout the book, especially Ramona and Beezus. I also love the dialogue throughout the book, I think that it is believable and sounds genuine. While this story is fun, a lot of the discipline tactics of the parents seem very antiquated. Often in the book, Ramona is told to do things because that is just the way it is A repeated theme throughout the book is that Ramona will grow out of her "exasperating" behavior as the mother and Aunt Beatrice did. However, I do not think that losing one's childlike fascination with the world and the questioning, curiosity and creativity that comes with it is something that should be glorified to kids. I think that encouraging Ramona to keep her eclectic creativity should be included in the book, not the attitude of tolerating it until it is outgrown.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The tale of two siblings who endure the trials and tribulations of childhood. I would use this in the classroom when learning about families, siblings, and how to handle our actions. I would have students draw their own families and tell their how family story.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I liked this book for many reasons. I liked the unique names that the characters have. For example the two main characters, Beezus and Ramona have uncommon names. This teaches readers that it is normal to have unique names and to be proud of your name and identity. I also liked how the author included illustrations on a few pages. The illustrations relate to the text and support the reader’s understanding of the plot. I liked how some chapters end in a question. For example, “But what on earth will Mother ever do with all that applesauce?” The author asks these questions to get the reader predicting what will happen in the next chapter. The big idea of the story is to love your family even if you have your differences.