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RAMONA THE PEST by Beverly Cleary Kirkus Star

RAMONA THE PEST

by Beverly Cleary ; illustrated by Louis Darling

Pub Date: April 3rd, 1968
ISBN: 0380709546
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Ramona's going to school. . . who needs a review? The little sister you'd most like to strangle is Miss Binney's problem now, from the first morning in kindergarten when she tells Ramona to "sit here for the present" through the question of how Mike Mulligan goes to the bathroom while he's racing Mary Ann to the crucial test of authority: making Ramona stop boing boinging Susan's long curls. Ramona becomes a kindergarten dropout when she declares she can't stop, spends several miserable days at home missing dawnzer lee light and Show and Tell and seat work before Miss Binney sends her a message that's not a capitulation but means that she must like her. Other crises are handled with similar insight: Ramona's fear of being anonymous behind the mask of "the baddest witch in the world" is particularly telling. The conjunction of belly laugh and basal emotion puts this on a par with the best in the series.