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Cleary, Beverly. 1984. Ramona Forever.

"Guess what?" Ramona Quimby asked one Friday evening when her Aunt Beatrice dropped by to show off her new ski clothes and to stay for supper.

Big changes are on the way for Ramona. And it all starts off with Howie's rich uncle. Aunt Beatrice is an important-but-not-often mentioned character in the Ramona books. She was definitely a player in Beezus and Ramona. But not much has been said about her since, not really. But all that changes in Ramona Forever. You see, Aunt Beatrice will soon not be the old-maid aunt anymore. Not when she meets (and gets reacquainted with) Howie's uncle, Hobart. And she's not the only one that is changing. Mrs. Quimby is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Ramona soon won't be the baby! Shocking concept isn't it? Soon they'll be another little Quimby running around and being a pest. Yes, changes are on the way. And Ramona isn't quite sure she's ready for them all. She's grown up quite a bit, but there's always more to do!

Cleary, Beverly. 1975. Ramona the Brave.

Yesterday, I reviewed Ramona the Pest. I love that book. I love the illustrations. The classic illustrations. The illustrations I grew up with. The edition of Ramona the Brave that I was able to find on the library shelves was ghastly. Maybe ghastly is too strong a word. Okay, I admit it is exaggerating it a bit. I suppose it's what I can expect from HarperCollins. The publishers that removed the Garth Williams illustrations from the Little House books wouldn't bat an eye about updating the illustrations for Ramona. These new illustrations are by Tracy Dockray. And they are wrong, wrong, wrong. Mostly wrong in principle, but wrong all the same. Just a note, a rather important note: the covers that I've been pairing with the reviews are the new books with the new illustrations.

Ramona the Brave. The book in hand. "Ramona Quimby, brave and fearless, was half running, half skipping to keep up with her big sister Beatrice on their way home from the park." Ramona is getting ready to start the first grade now. Big changes are on the way, Beezus now wants to be called Beatrice. Mrs. Quimby is going to be working outside the home. (Shocking, I know. But this was the seventies.) And the Quimbys' are going to be adding another room onto the house so that Beezus and Ramona won't have to share. All that in addition to both girls starting a new school year.

A new school year, a new teacher, some old familiar classmates. Ramona wants to be a good girl. And she's going to try her best not to let Susan and her boing-boing curls tempt her into trouble. But Susan is not making it easy. Susan's prone to copy-catting and tattle taling.

First grade is not making a good impression on Ramona. And her teacher is not like Miss Binney at all. All Ramona wants is for her teacher to like her, to appreciate her, to understand her, to not label her a trouble-maker.

Drama, drama, drama. I enjoyed Ramona the Brave. Certainly some parts are memorable. Her destroying Susan's owl and then later repenting and feeling guilty. Her note to her mother gets me every time. Such real emotion. And the bit about her getting chased with a dog and making a new shoe with some paper and a stapler. Her loving Beezus' teacher? Gotta love that!

But the absolutely best scene in Ramona the Brave. The one that makes it all worth while. Is Chapter Eight: Ramona Says A Bad Word. The bad word in question. Well, I'll just have to let you see:

Ramona had had enough. She had been miserable the whole first grade, and she no longer cared what happened. She wanted to do something bad. She wanted to do something terrible that would shock her whole family, something that would make them sit up and take notice. "I'm going to say a bad word!" she shouted with a stamp of her foot. That silenced her family. Picky-picky stopped washing and left the room. Mr. Quimby looked surprised and--how could he be so disloyal--a little amused. This made Ramona even angrier. Beezus looked interested and curious. After a moment Mrs. Quimby said quietly, "Go ahead, Ramona, and say the bad word if it will make you feel any better." Ramona clenched her fists and took a deep breath. "Guts!" she yelled. "Guts! Guts! Guts!" There. That would show them. Unfortunately, Ramona's family was not shocked and horrified as Ramona had expected. (137-138)

Don't you just love it? I especially love the process of how it's resolved. "Her parents continued to sit in silence, but Ramona was past caring what anyone did. She cried harder than she ever had cried in her life. She cried until she was limp and exhausted. Then Ramona felt her mother's hand on her back.d 'Ramona,' she said gently, 'what are we going to do with you?' With red eyes, a swollen face, and a streaming nose, Ramona sat up and glared at her mother. 'Love me!' Her voice was fierce with hurt. Shocked at her own words, she buried her face in the pillow. She had no tears left." (141)

Such raw emotion that is as authentic as can be. No wonder I connected with Ramona growing up!

Cleary, Beverly. 1968. Ramona the Pest.

"I am not a pest," Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.

Ramona is back. Originally published in 1968, a full decade after Beezus and Ramona, Ramona the Pest follows Ramona as she enters a strange, new world: kindergarten. Now five years old, Ramona is ready--or so she thinks--to conquer this thing called school. Eager to learn to read and write so she can catch up with her older sister Beezus. But what Ramona doesn't expect to be quite so challenging is the ever-going struggle to be good, to stay good through the course of a school day. Staying in her seat. Being quiet. Following the rules. Playing nicely with others. Ramona hasn't encountered much resistance. This has been Ramona's philosophy, and up to a point, it has always worked for her: "If she had to, she would make a great big noisy fuss, and when Ramona made a great big noisy fuss, she usually got her own way. Great big noisy fusses were often necessary when a girl was the youngest member of the family and the youngest person on her block." (12) So you can only imagine what a rude awakening is in store for her as she enters Miss Binney's kindergarten class.

Ramona the Pest is completely delightful. The novel is from Ramona's perspective, and she captures kid-thinking, kid-acting so authentically. Ramona and her classmates. What can I say? There's the ever-so-cute, ever-so-kissable Davy, Susan with the boing-boing curls, and Howie who is Ramona's playmate not by choice but because their parents are good friends. What I didn't realize growing up was how authentically she captures the teacher, Miss Binney.

I have so many favorite scenes from Ramona the Pest. But my favorite favorite favorite scene comes from chapter five, "Ramona's Engagement Ring." Henry Huggins, boy hero, saves Ramona and earns her new-found love and attention.

One of the things that makes these novels so charming, so perfectly delightful (besides the brilliantly witty and authentic characters and dialogue) is the artwork by Louis Darling.

Cleary, Beverly. 1955. Beezus and Ramona.

Originally published in 1955, Beezus and Ramona is a true children's classic. Beezus, age 9, and Ramona, age 4, are the stars of Beezus and Ramona. This story is told from Beezus' perspective. (I believe the others in the series are told from Ramona's perspective.) This is how it opens: "Beatrice Quimby's biggest problem was her little sister Ramona. Beatrice, or Beezus (as everyone called her, because that was what Ramona had called her when she first learned to talk), knew other nine-year-old girls who had little sisters who went to nursery school, but she did not know anyone with a little sister like Ramona." If you've read any of the Ramona series, you know what she's talking about. Ramona. That love-to-hate, pesky little sister who is always into something. She has to be one of the best-loved, most-memorable characters ever created.

In Beezus and Ramona, we see the family dynamics of the Quimby household and the tension between two sisters. Beezus is almost perpetually frustrated with her younger sister. And Ramona is well, Ramona. Prone to wanting what she wants when she wants it.

I must have read this series dozens and dozens of times growing up. But I haven't read it recently. I probably last read it in 1999. Ramona is just as great as I remembered it. Each chapter has a scene that I almost know by heart. From the opening chapter, where Ramona's fascination with steam shovels lead her to destroy a library book, to the last chapter where Ramona's imaginative "acting-out" of Hansel and Gretel leads her to bake her doll, Bendix, in the oven and ruin her sister's birthday cake in the process.

I highly recommend this series to readers young and old. I think they make especially nice read-alouds! You can read the first chapter online here.

Interviewed by Cheryl Rainfield

Grumpy Bird
written and illustrated by Jeremy Tankard
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Pub Date: April 2007
ISBN 10: 0439851475, ISBN-13: 978-0439851473

Synopsis: Bird wakes up feeling grumpy–so grumpy he doesn’t want to eat, play, or even fly. “Looks like I’m walking today,” says Bird. He starts walking, and as he does, he passes various animals who join him in his walk. Eventually, their companionship helps him move right out of grumpiness.

Grumpy Bird is a funny, sweet book that will have you immediately recognizing someone–maybe even yourself!–and how it feels to be grumpy. If you haven’t read this book, I suggest you get your hands on a copy!

Jeremy Tankard

Why did you write Grumpy Bird?

[jt] My daughter, who was then three, asked me to do some drawings for her in my sketchbook. She requested “grumpy things”. Specifically she asked me to draw a grumpy bear. I drew a grumpy bear. She asked for a grumpy snake. I drew a grumpy snake (you don’t want to meet a grumpy snake up close). She asked for a grumpy clock. I drew a grumpy clock. Then she asked for a grumpy bird. I drew a grumpy bird going for a walk. He was wearing red sneakers and looked pretty funny. We both started to laugh and an idea was born! What happens when a grumpy bird goes for a walk? To answer this question I had to write the book. We authors ask the big questions. Ha!

What a lovely story! What a great beginning.

Grumpy’s bird’s grumpiness is both funny and familiar (in the way that people get when they’re grumpy). Did you have a particular person in mind when you wrote his character?

[jt] I can’t answer that for fear of repercussions. Actually it’s based on everyone I know. As you say, it’s familiar. We’ve all had one of those days when we just get up on the wrong side of the bed and have a hard time cheering up.

You’re absolutely right! (Laughing)

I love the humor in Grumpy Bird. Did the humor come naturally to you?

[jt] Curiously I don’t consider myself to be very funny. In the case of Grumpy Bird it was one of those rare moments when I found myself entertaining. I looked at that initial picture of a grumpy bird and he just had a character and personality right from that initial drawing. He just looked funny. The humour grew naturally out of a quirky little picture. And really, grumpy is often funny - we’re just not allowed to laugh at people when they’re being grumpy. But we often want to. Don’t we? Or is that just me?

I think a lot of us go there.

What mediums did you work in to do the illustrations? Do you do most of your work by hand or on the computer?

[jt] Both. It’s a fairly even marriage of traditional art and digital media. I still draw and paint on paper but I “remix” it using Adobe Photoshop. Basically I do all my drawings using ink in my sketchbook. Then I scan them into Adobe Photoshop. They get cleaned up before being exported to Corel Painter where I colour the characters. Then I import the freshly coloured characters into Photoshop where I build the background environments before placing the characters in them. The finished piece is almost like a digital photo collage except I use more drawings than photos in the collaging process.

Wow! That sounds really involved.

colored animals before working in Photoshop

image after it’s been worked on in PhotoShop

image as it appeared in the book

Is there any artist that you draw inspiration from?

[jt] There are a few, and they’re probably not who you’d expect. Chihiro Iwasaki is one of my favourite illustrators. She was amazing and I’ve probably drawn more inspiration from her than from anyone else — at least recently. There’s a poetic simplicity in her sketches that has me completely mesmerized. Jack Kirby, inventor of most of the Marvel Universe of super heroes, is also a favourite. He almost singlehandedly invented the modern super hero comic book. There’s a raw energy in his work that I admire. It’s weird to try and analyze one’s own work. I have moments where there’s a nice balance between thoughtful lyricism of line and explosive energy. I also love Chris Raschka, Marie Louise-Gay, Peter H. Reynolds, Dave McKean, Barron Storrey, James Jean, etc….

You’ve mentioned some great illustrators, there.

What was the hardest thing for you to write in this book? Why?

[jt]The words were the hardest. Despite loving writing most of my life it was unbelievably difficult putting words to such a simple story. In the end I drew a bunch of pictures and fit the words to them. Then I wrote and drew in tandem until it was finished. Then the editing process started. I hadn’t had much experience putting words and pictures together before this. It’s a fine balance knowing what to keep and what to throw away in a picture book. The pictures do most of the actual story-telling and the words fill in the gaps and flesh out the story.

What was the hardest thing for you to illustrate in this book? Why?

[jt] Bird himself was the most difficult to draw consistently. He’s a funny shape. Needless to say I didn’t quite get it right all the time. But there’s a good spontaneity to the drawings so I tried not to worry too much about it. And while he’s grumpy for most of the book it was tough getting just the right expression on his face. Grumpy but not angry. It’s a fine line sometimes.

I think you succeeded.

If there’s an idea or message you hope your readers take away from your book, what is it?

[jt] Don’t be grumpy? In general I aim to entertain first. I write and draw what I think will be fun and just hope that someone else will like it too. I guess the message in the book is that companionship and a little exercise is the best medicine for a mood. It’s not what I was trying to say, but I think it’s the message that came across in the end. Often I write first and THEN try and figure out exactly what it is that I’ve done. Or more to the point: I write my story and then let my editor figure out what I’ve done and tell me what the message is. I try to function on my intuition most of the time.

What are some of your favourite picture books or children’s books?

[jt] Pretty much anything by Kate DiCamillo, but especially The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and The Tale of Despereaux. Roald Dahl is wonderful – I’m particularly enamoured of Danny the Champion of the World. The Witches is pretty great too. As for picture books: anything by Chihiro Iwasaki; I love Jon J Muth’s illustrations; Simon James’s Baby Brains books are wonderful; Captain Pugwash by John Ryan; anything illustrated by Stephen Gammell, but I’m especially fond of Monster Mama; I love Doreen Cronin’s books; I could go on, but it would be an incredibly long list. Oh, and I LOVE all of Ed Emberley’s “how to draw books”.

I love that you love so many authors’ and illustrators’ works! Some of them are my favorites, too.

Is there anything you would like to tell readers?

[jt] I didn’t do it! It’s not my fault. Really.

(laughing) Thank you, Jeremy, for an enjoyable and funny interview.

If you haven’t read Grumpy Bird, go read it! It’s wonderful.

If you like Mo Willems or his books (Leonardo, the Terrible Monster; Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct; Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!; Knuffle Bunny), then you might want to check out the fantastic video interview with him, for his new book Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity.

The interview made me like him all the more. He said some things I really relate to. When asked where his unique humor comes from, he said: “A lifetime of suffering. One of the things, actually, is the insight … that childhood is not always a happy place. And that there are real failures and real failings and you can find humor in that. … Particularly when I was a child, all the characters where these joyous bunnies and, you know, incredibly excitable mice and I wasn’t happy so I felt guilty that I wasn’t as happy as a rodent.”

I love it when authors and illustrators are honest and have some deep things to say, or things that take some courage to say. Things that feel real, and that I can identify with. I don’t yet know how to turn my own pain into humor, but I love that Willems can and does. It’s inspiring.

Willems also tells readers how to pronounce “Knuffle.” It’s “kuh-nuffle.” But he says that if you buy his book you can pronounce it any way you like.

So go watch the interview; I bet you’ll enjoy it! Thanks to Farida at Saints and Spinners for this great link.

Leonardo, the Terrible Monster and Edwina: The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems are some of my top favorite picture books. If you’re curious, you can read my reviews of Leonardo the Terrible Monster and Edwina: The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct.

Interviewed by Cheryl Rainfield

Luck of the Loch Ness Monster: A Tale of Picky Eating

written by A. W. Flaherty, illustrated by Scott Magoon
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Pub date: September 2007
ISBN-10: 0618556443, ISBN-13: 978-0618556441

Synopsis:
A picky eater on a long boat trip dumps her oatmeal over the side each morning, and each morning, a sea worm gobbles it up, becoming larger and larger until he’s known as the Lock Ness Monster.

A. W. Flaherty & her twins

Why did you write The Luck of the Lock Ness Monster?

The true story? I wrote it for my twins’ fourth birthday, but when I got to the drawings I realized that somewhere in medical school I had forgotten how to draw. Except brain slices and stuff; I can still draw those. Anyway, I told this sad story to the editor of my second book, The Midnight Disease. She said “You poor thing. But why not just get it published? Then they will hire someone to do the drawings.” She took it over to her friend in Children’s department, who eventually acquired the book and got me the wonderful Scott Magoon, who draws better than I could ever dream of, even in my long-ago prime.

That’s great that you had that connection.

In your book, Katerina-Elizabeth hates oatmeal, and your descriptions of oatmeal from her viewpoint make it sound completely unappealing. Why did you pick oatmeal as the food Katerina-Elizabeth doesn’t like?

Oatmeal is like slug slime, only lumpier. Those of you who eat that instant stuff out of packets, that is not nearly as bad as the real thing, Scottish steel-cut oatmeal. My parents would boil it for 45 minutes before we ate it. You have to, or you can’t digest it. While it was boiling it would belch big oatmeal bubbles of steam into the air.

(Laughing.) That sounds awful! I don’t like oatmeal, either.

What has being a picky eater, and having one child who is a picky eater, meant to you? Did you ever feel misunderstood?

My parents were pretty decent about it. They made sure I got enough vitamins and iron and “try one bite” and so on, but they didn’t force me to do anything really horrible. Even in my 20s, I’d go home for vacation and my parents and sister would be eating crab and Chinese food and so on, and I would make myself a Skippy peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Pepperidge Farm white bread. I didn’t actually like that much either, but it was way better than the things normal people ate.

I love the humor in your book. Did the humor come easily to you, or was it hard to write?

It is hard for me not to write humorously. You may think that is a joke, but it is not a joke when you are a scientist. My collaborators go through my papers and take all the jokes out, and I really try to sound dignified and objective, but then I accidentally stick some jokes in the final draft. There is a German name for brain damage that causes inappropriate jokiness: Wittelsucht.

Well, your humor is perfect in a picture book.


What was the hardest thing for you to write in this book (a character, the beginning or ending)? Why?

The hardest thing was responding to someone’s request that I make the girl and the monster have a more touching relationship. They said that readers expect that of a kid – animal story. To me, this book was not Lassie, or Old Yaller. Anyway, in kid-animal stories, something bad always happens to the dog. In my story, I just wanted the animal to get bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s a different genre.

If there’s an idea or message you hope your readers take away from your book, what is it?

Healthy eating is important – I certainly know that as a doctor — but parents are highly anxious and overdo it. If you bug your kids to eat lima beans, they will probably hate them even more. If that’s possible.

What are some of your favourite picture books or children’s books?

I could list 100 off the top of my head. Where the Wild Things Are. Jessie Wilcox Smith’s illustrations for A Child’s Garden of Verses. Anything illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger, especially Noah’s Ark. The drawing of Babar’s dream in (I think) Babar the King. Little Nemo in Slumberland. N.C. Wyeth. Johnny Crow’s Garden – whoever wrote that. I like all the O’Neill illustrations in the Wizard of Oz books, even though they are so fluffy. Edward Gorey. The kids’ biography of Frida Kahlo, with illustrations by Ana Juan. Mary Nazarian. Ivan Bilibnin. Marjorie Flack….

It’s clear you love books!

Is there anything you would like to tell readers?

Oh, I like to give advice to anyone on any subject, at great length. It is a little problem I have.

Thank you, Alice.

The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster is a funny, entertaining story about picky eaters, sea monsters, and oatmeal. Check it out and find out for yourself!

You can read my complete review of The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster here: http://www.cherylrainfield.com/picture-book-review_Luck-of-the-loch-ness-monster.html

Interviewed by Cheryl Rainfield.

Pssst!
written and illustrated by Adam Rex
Publisher: Harcourt Children’s Books
Pub date: September 2007
ISBN-10: 0152058176
ISBN-13: 978-0152058173

Synopsis:
A child, a visit to the zoo, animals–sounds like good, simple all-American fun. But there’s something different about this zoo. These animals want things. Unusual things. What will they do with them?

Why did you write and illustrate Pssst!? What was the spark or inspiration for the book?

I really enjoyed how most of the text appears through dialog bubbles. It reminded me of comics. Do you read comics, or did you used to? Why did you decide to make the girl’s speech appear that way?

I’m a big comics fan. I think there’s a pretty razor-thin distinction between the comics form and picture books anyway. It would only take some reformatting to turn almost any picture book into a comic, or almost any comic into a picture book. As an author-illustrator, I can write and plan the visuals at the same time, so when I get to a point in the story in which, for example, the javelina is trying to get Zooey’s (the main character’s) attention, I could write,
I heard another Pssst! This one came from the javelina enclosure.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hola,” said the javelina.
and so on, and maybe illustrate all this with just one image of Zooey and the boar. Or I could simply show another “Pssst!” in a word balloon, then show Zooey next to the javelina enclosure and continue the dialog in pictures and word balloons from there. Neither way is right or wrong, of course, but you certainly don’t need both approaches at the same time. It would be redundant.

It feels like there are many layers of humor and understanding in your illustrations–some geared for child readers, some for adult readers. Did you intentionally write to reach both sets of readers?

some of Adam Rex’s models for Pssst!

I think I really write for myself, with my child audience firmly in mind as well. But first and foremost I’m trying to make books that I like, and trusting my editors to tell me if they have kid appeal as well. So I hope there’s always something for the parents in my books. They buy them, after all, and they’re probably the ones reading them, if I’m lucky. I want kids to love my books, and I at least want parents not to die a little inside when my books have been requested for the tenth night in a row.

What was the hardest thing for you to write in this book (a character, the beginning or ending)? Why?

The ending practically came first. I guess the biggest challenge was to select the animals, and to give each some object they could reasonably need, but which could also be useful for the surprise ending.

What was the hardest thing for you to illustrate in this book? Why?

Well, I illustrated the whole thing in a style I’d never tried before–-fully-modeled and rendered characters within a fairly flat tableau of color and line art. I had to figure out how the whole thing was going to look as I went along, and that was a big challenge.

If there’s an idea or message you hope your readers take away from your book, what is it?

It’s okay to say no when zoo animals ask unreasonable things of you. Be polite but firm.

Thank you, Adam.

You can check out Adam’s site at: http://www.adamrex.com