Beverly Cleary - Binge Reading on my Morning Commute

I have been binging on Beverly Cleary books in the last week or two. It has been extremely rewarding and very fun.

After finishing listening to The Coddling of the American Mind, and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, I found on Scribd a collection of the Ramona and Beezus series all in the form of audiobooks. There were:

Beezus and Ramona
Ramona the Pest
Ramona and Her Father
Ramona and Her Mother
Ramona Quimby Age 8
Ramona Forever, and
Ramona's World (not necessarily in this order)

This series was a lot of fun to listen to because nobody in the story is perfect, everyone has their struggles, and it portrays the challenges of a child growing up and trying to match up to the maturity of her older sister, often messing something up when trying her very best, and so on. Even Ramona's parents have your common, real-life struggles. There is one part where the family has had an exceptionally long day so much so that even Mr. and Mrs. Quimby are unreasonable and cross like they always tell their daughters not to be. They get into a silly argument over something very pointless and their daughters go to bed worried that their parents will divorce or something. The next morning when all is well, the girls ask their parents about it and it is explained to them that even parents have bad days, it doesn't mean it's the end of the world. It is this way that Ramona and Beezus realize that even parents cannot be perfect all the time.

I then began to read (read, not listen to) Fifteen which is one of Beverly Cleary's first love series. It was really cute. I finished reading it, amazingly, while riding the bus standing up. I didn't even get car sick, which is potentially a great victory in itself.

One of the most remarkable scenes from Fifteen involves Jane eating at a Chinese restaurant for the first time, not knowing what any of the food is in front of her while being teased about things like beetle juice (which was actually soy sauce), and trying to use chopsticks and successfully spilling much of her dinner on her clothes.

I like the story in that Jane realizes that if any boy is going to like her, he had better like her for who she truly is and not because she was acting like someone else in order to win favor. She also realizes that her crush is still a normal person, not some high and mighty thing that needs to be constantly impressed. The story is cute, and so well portrays Jane's character and agonizing over whether she is really the kind of person that Stan would like.