The Complete 8-Book Ramona Collection: Beezus and Ramona, Ramona and Her Father, Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Ramona Forever, Ramona the Brave, Ramona the Pest, Ramona's World

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Ramona Geraldine Quimby: The main character. She has straight, short brown hair and an active imagination. Her middle name is Geraldine. Open Mouth, Insert Foot: At Ramona's birthday party in Ramona's World, Susan comes with an apple and says she's not allowed to eat cake because it has Ramona's germs from when Ramona blew out the candles. This immediately makes most of the guests scrape off the frosting, and Ramona is understandably furious. Finally, her new friend Daisy eats the cake and says there's nothing wrong with it, leading to the Surprisingly Realistic Outcome moment where the other kids call out Susan for being impolite, and she starts to cry because she thinks no one likes her. Precocious Crush: Beezus gets one on her sixth-grade teacher. Ramona ends up meeting him when she has to borrow a stapler, immediately takes a liking to him because he treats her like a real person, and decides she'd probably have one on him too if she were in his class. Express Lane Limit: Mr. Quimby works as a supermarket cashier for a while. The express lane has a nine-item limit, but customers frequently try to sneak through with ten or eleven items. The customers often count the items in each other's baskets and argue among themselves. Naturally, Mr. Quimby dislikes working the express lane.

In Southern California, shortly after the Mexican–American War, a Scottish-Native American orphan girl, Ramona, is raised by Señora Gonzaga Moreno, the sister of Ramona's deceased foster mother. Ramona is referred to as illegitimate in some summaries of the novel, but chapter 3 of the novel says that Ramona's parents were married by a priest in the San Gabriel Mission. Señora Moreno has raised Ramona as part of the family, giving her every luxury. Ramona's foster mother had requested this as her dying wish. Because Ramona has partial Native American heritage, Moreno reserves her love for her only child, Felipe Moreno, whom she adores. Señora Moreno identifies as Mexican of pure Spanish ancestry. She hates Americans since the United States annexation of California following its victory in the war. They have disputed her claim to her lands, and have divided her huge rancho. Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Largely in the middle. There's a lot of humor that comes from the situations Ramona gets into as well as her thoughts and views on things, but also a lot of drama coming from Ramona's dealing with the world and problems in her life from a child's eye perspective (e.g. her frustration at people not taking her seriously and laughing at her unintentional malapropisms in the younger stories, getting in trouble for things she didn't mean to do — this stuff is devastating to a little kid!). The stories are neither very silly nor very serious and do a good job of balancing humor with drama. As Ramona gets older, the focus does swing closer to drama, but still remains in the center. Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: No names are named, but when Ramona quotes a funny man she saw on TV saying "The devil made me do it!" she's probably thinking about Flip Wilson. When Beezus wants her hair done like an ice skater on TV, she probably means Dorothy Hamil, who often had her hairdo copied at the time. Again, no name named. The novel contributed to the unique cultural identity of Southern California and the whole of the Southwest. The architecture of the missions had recently gained national exposure and local restoration projects were just beginning. Railroad lines to Southern California were just opening and, combined with the emotions stirred by the novel, the region suddenly gained national attention. [2] Mission Revival Style architecture became popular from about 1890 to 1915. Many examples still stand throughout California and other southwest areas. The Scapegoat: A big part of Ramona's dislike for Willa Jean comes from the fact that no matter what kind of bratty things Willa Jean does, Mrs. Kemp always blames Ramona for them because she's older and "should have stopped her".Character Overlap: Occasionally features Henry Huggins and several other characters from his own books. Justified, as both series take place in the same neighbourhood.

Ramona considers herself to be daring, and is in some cases astonished to understand that others don’t concur. It’s the late spring after kindergarten, and things are changing at the Quimby house. Mrs. Quimby has low maintenance work, and the family is having an additional room included to the house. Ramona valiantly stands up to spooks at the playground and a mean pooch on her approach to class, however she isn’t set up for how frightening it feels going to rest in the fresh out of the plastic new room – alone. In 1940 she married Clarence T. Cleary and they moved to Oakland, California. The Clearys became parents to a set of twins, Marianne Elisabeth and Malcolm James, in 1955. Clarence Cleary died in 2004. Beverly Cleary lived in Carmel, California until her death in 2021 at the age of one-hundred and four. Davy: A timid, skinny boy whom Ramona used to chase around the playground each day in kindergarten.Ramona is once told to wait until "a quarter after seven" to walk to school. She thinks this means to leave at 7:25 (since a quarter is worth 25 cents) instead of 7:15, and ends up being late.

Ramona resents how Susan appears perfect but isn't, especially when the latter copied her owl in first grade. Susan's immaturity is revealed at Ramona's birthday party in fourth-grade when she says her mother made her bring an apple because the cake has germs on it from Ramona blowing out the candles. This leads to Daisy and the other kids calling her out for being rude, and even Mrs. Quimby doesn't contest that. Everyone Has Standards: Unsaid, but some of Ramona's first-grade classmates go out of their way to be nicer to her after the teacher forces her to apologize to Susan in front of the entire class for scrunching her owl. The Ramona books became out of Cleary’s before Henry Huggins series and happen in the same neighborhood. In the Henry Huggins books Beezus was one of Henry’s companions, and her more youthful sister Ramona was for the most part a vermin to Henry, Beezus and the other kids. Both Ramona's father and the man who runs the hair salon Beezus goes to in Ramona and her Mother are named Robert. Henry Huggins: Beezus' red-headed friend. The Ramona series of books are a spin-off of the Henry Huggins series.

Fantastic Slurs: Downplayed. The first-graders will often refer to the kindergarteners insultingly as "kindergarten babies" despite only being about a year older than them.

Two books in the series were named Newbery Honor books, Ramona and Her Father and Ramona Quimby, Age 8; Ramona and Her Mother received the National Book Award. Sometimes known as the Beezus and Ramona series. Foreign Remake: The 1980s series moved the setting from Portland, Oregon to Southern Ontario, Canada, with the serial numbers filed off. Mrs. Dorothy Quimby (née Day): Ramona's mother, who works as a bookkeeper for a doctor. She is calm and practical, and much like Beezus in temperament, though she also has a deep and loving bond with Ramona.

Beezus's is her acne. Ramona triggered it inadvertently by calling her 'pizzaface'. Ramona just meant it as a variation on 'pieface', but Beezus took it as an insult at her acne and got extremely offended by it. Susan, the spoiled too-perfect girl whose curls grab Ramona's attention to her own detriment. She has a breakdown in fourth grade about having "to be perfect all the time". Full-Name Ultimatum: Ramona knows she's in big trouble when she's called either "Ramona Geraldine Quimby" or "Young Lady".