Beverly Cleary 
I L L U S T R AT E D B Y 
	Tracy Dockray 
	v
	viii
	Contents 
	1. Beezus and Her Little Sister 1 
	2. Beezus and Her Imagination 38 
	3. Ramona and Ribsy 69 
	4. Ramona and the Apples 94 
	5. A Party at the Quimbys’ 117 
	6. Beezus’s Birthday 148 
	About the Author
	Other Books by Beverly Cleary 
	Credits
	Cover 
	Copyright
	About the Publisher 
	vii
	
	iv
	1 
	Beezus and 
	Her Little Sister 
	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-yearold girls who had little sisters who went to 
	nursery school, but she did not know 
	anyone with a little sister like Ramona. 
	Beezus felt that the biggest trouble with 
	1 
	four-year-old Ramona was that she was just 
	plain exasperating. If Ramona drank lemonade through a straw, she blew into the straw 
	as hard as she could to see what would 
	happen. If she played with her finger paints 
	in the front yard, she wiped her hands on 
	the neighbors’ cat.That was the exasperating 
	sort of thing Ramona did. And then there 
	was the way she behaved about her favorite 
	book. 
	It all began one afternoon after school 
	when Beezus was sitting in her father’s big 
	chair embroidering a laughing teakettle on 
	a pot holder for one of her aunts for 
	Christmas. She was trying to embroider this 
	one neatly, because she planned to give it to 
	Aunt Beatrice, who was Mother’s younger 
	sister and Beezus’s most special aunt. 
	With gray thread Beezus carefully outlined the steam coming from the teakettle’s 
	spout and thought about her pretty young 
	2 
	aunt, who was always so gay and so understanding. No wonder she was Mother’s 
	favorite sister. Beezus hoped to be exactly 
	like Aunt Beatrice when she grew up. She 
	wanted to be a fourth-grade teacher and 
	drive a yellow convertible and live in an 
	apartment house with an elevator and a 
	buzzer that opened the front door. Because 
	she was named after Aunt Beatrice, Beezus 
	felt she might be like her in other ways, too. 
	While Beezus was sewing, Ramona, 
	holding a mouth organ in her teeth, was 
	riding around the living room on her tricycle. Since she needed both hands to steer the 
	tricycle, she could blow in and out on only 
	one note. This made the harmonica sound 
	as if it were groaning oh dear, oh dear over and 
	over again. 
	Beezus tried to pay no attention. She tied 
	a small knot in the end of a piece of red 
	thread to embroider the teakettle’s laughing 
	3 
	
	mouth. “Conceal a knot as you would a 
	secret,” Grandmother always said. 
	Inhaling and exhaling into her mouth 
	organ, Ramona closed her eyes and tried 
	to pedal around the coffee table without 
	looking. 
	“Ramona!” cried Beezus. “Watch where 
	you’re going!” 
	When Ramona crashed into the coffee 
	table, she opened her eyes again. Oh dear, oh 
	dear, moaned the harmonica. Around and 
	around pedaled Ramona, inhaling and 
	exhaling. 
	Beezus looked up from her pot holder. 
	“Ramona, why don’t you play with Bendix 
	for a while?” Bendix was Ramona’s favorite 
	doll. Ramona thought Bendix was the most 
	beautiful name in the world. 
	Ramona took the harmonica out of her 
	mouth. “No,” she said. “Read my Scoopy 
	book to me.” 
	“Oh, Ramona, not Scoopy,” protested 
	Beezus.“We’ve read Scoopy so many times.” 
	Instead of answering, Ramona put her 
	harmonica between her teeth again and 
	pedaled around the room, inhaling and 
	exhaling. Beezus had to lift her feet every 
	time Ramona rode by. 
	The knot in Beezus’s thread pulled 
	through the material of her pot holder, and 
	she gave up trying to conceal it as she would 
	5 
	a secret and tied a bigger knot. Finally, tired 
	of trying to keep her feet out of Ramona’s 
	way, she put down her embroidery. “All 
	right, Ramona,” she said. “If I read about 
	Scoopy, will you stop riding your tricycle 
	around the living room and making so 
	much noise?” 
	“Yes,” said Ramona, and climbed off her 
	tricycle. She ran into the bedroom she 
	shared with Beezus and returned with a battered, dog-eared, sticky book, which she 
	handed to Beezus. Then she climbed into 
	the big chair beside Beezus and waited 
	expectantly. 
	Reflecting that Ramona always managed 
	to get her own way, Beezus gingerly took 
	the book and looked at it with a feeling of 
	great dislike. It was called The Littlest Steam 
	Shovel. On the cover was a picture of a steam 
	shovel with big tears coming out of its eyes. 
	How could a steam shovel have eyes, Beezus 
	6 
	thought and, scarcely looking at the words, 
	began for what seemed like the hundredth 
	or maybe the thousandth time, “Once there 
	was a little steam shovel named Scoopy. One 
	day Scoopy said,‘I do not want to be a steam 
	shovel. I want to be a bulldozer.’ ” 
	“You skipped,” interrupted Ramona. 
	“No, I didn’t,” said Beezus. 
	“Yes, you did,” insisted Ramona. “You’re 
	supposed to say, ‘I want to be a big bulldozer.’ ” 
	“Oh, all right,” said Beezus crossly. “ ‘I 
	want to be a big bulldozer.’ ” 
	Ramona smiled contentedly and Beezus 
	continued reading. “ ‘G-r-r-r,’ said Scoopy, 
	doing his best to sound like a bulldozer.” 
	Beezus read on through Scoopy’s failure 
	to be a bulldozer. She read about Scoopy’s 
	wanting to be a trolley bus (“Beep-beep,” 
	honked Ramona), a locomotive (“A-hooey, 
	a-hooey,” wailed Ramona), and a pile driver 
	7 
	(“Clunk! Clunk!” shouted Ramona). Beezus 
	was glad when she finally reached the end of 
	the story and Scoopy learned it was best for 
	little steam shovels to be steam shovels. 
	“There!” she said with relief, and closed the 
	book. She always felt foolish trying to make 
	noises like machinery. 
	“Clunk! Clunk!” yelled Ramona, jumping down from the chair. She pulled her 
	harmonica out of the pocket of her overalls 
	and climbed on her tricycle. Oh dear, oh dear, 
	she inhaled and exhaled. 
	“Ramona!” cried Beezus. “You promised 
	you’d stop if I read Scoopy to you.” 
	“I did stop,” said Ramona, when she had 
	taken the harmonica out of her mouth. 
	“Now read it again.” 
	“Ramona Geraldine Quimby!” Beezus 
	began, and stopped. It was useless to argue 
	with Ramona. She wouldn’t pay any attention. “Why do you like that story anyway?” 
	8 
	Beezus asked. “Steam shovels can’t talk, and 
	I feel silly trying to make all those noises.” 
	“I don’t,” said Ramona, and wailed, “Ahooey, a-hooey,” with great feeling before 
	she put her harmonica back in her mouth. 
	Beezus watched her little sister pedal furiously around the living room, inhaling and 
	exhaling. Why did she have to like a book 
	about a steam shovel anyway? Girls weren’t 
	supposed to like machinery. Why couldn’t 
	she like something quiet, like Peter Rabbit? 
	Mother, who had bought The Littlest 
	Steam Shovel at the Supermarket to keep 
	Ramona quiet while she shopped one afternoon, was so tired of Scoopy that she always 
	managed to be too busy to read to Ramona. 
	Father came right out and said he was fed up 
	with frustrated steam shovels and he would 
	not read that book to Ramona and, furthermore, no one else was to read it to her while 
	he was in the house. And that was that. 
	9 
	So only Beezus was left to read Scoopy to 
	Ramona. Plainly something had to be done 
	and it was up to Beezus to do it. But what? 
	Arguing with Ramona was a waste of time. 
	So was appealing to her better nature. The 
	best thing to do with Ramona, Beezus had 
	learned, was to think up something to take 
	the place of whatever her mind was fixed 
	upon. And what could take the place of The 
	Littlest Steam Shovel? Another book, of 
	course, a better book, and the place to find 
	it was certainly the library. 
	“Ramona, how would you like me to 
	take you to the library to find a different 
	book?” Beezus asked. She really enjoyed 
	taking Ramona places, which, of course, was 
	quite different from wanting to go someplace herself and having Ramona insist on 
	tagging along. 
	For a moment Ramona was undecided. 
	Plainly she was torn between wanting The 
	10 
	Littlest Steam Shovel read aloud again and the 
	pleasure of going out with Beezus. “O.K.,” 
	she agreed at last. 
	“Get your sweater while I tell Mother,” 
	said Beezus. 
	“Clunk! Clunk!” shouted Ramona happily. 
	When Ramona appeared with her sweater, 
	Beezus stared at her in dismay. Oh, no, 
	she thought. She can’t wear those to the 
	library. 
	On her head Ramona wore a circle of 
	cardboard with two long paper ears attached. 
	The insides of the ears were colored with 
	pink crayon, Ramona’s work at nursery 
	school. “I’m the Easter bunny,” announced 
	Ramona. 
	“Mother,” wailed Beezus. “You aren’t 
	going to let her wear those awful ears to the 
	library!” 
	“Why, I don’t see why not.” Mother 
	11 
	sounded surprised that Beezus should object 
	to Ramona’s ears. 
	“They look so silly.Whoever heard of an 
	Easter bunny in September?” Beezus complained, as Ramona hopped up and down to 
	make her ears flop. I just hope we don’t 
	meet anyone we know, Beezus thought, as 
	they started out the front door. 
	But the girls had no sooner left the house 
	when they saw Mrs.Wisser, a lady who lived 
	in the next block, coming toward them with 
	a friend. It was too late to turn back. Mrs. 
	Wisser had seen them and was waving. 
	“Why, hello there, Beatrice,” Mrs. Wisser 
	said, when they met. “I see you have a dear 
	little bunny with you today.” 
	“Uh . . . yes.” Beezus didn’t know what 
	else to say. 
	Ramona obligingly hopped up and down 
	to make her ears flop. 
	Mrs.Wisser said to her friend, as if Beezus 
	12 
	
	and Ramona couldn’t hear, “Isn’t she 
	adorable?” 
	Both children knew whom Mrs. Wisser 
	was talking about. If she had been talking 
	about Beezus, she would have said something 
	quite different. Such a nice girl, probably. A 
	13 
	sweet child. Adorable, never. 
	“Just look at those eyes,” said Mrs.Wisser. 
	Ramona beamed. She knew whose eyes 
	they were talking about. Beezus knew, too, 
	but she didn’t care. Mother said blue eyes 
	were just as pretty as brown. 
	Mrs. Wisser leaned over to Ramona. 
	“What color are your eyes, sweetheart?” she 
	asked. 
	“Brown and white,” said Ramona 
	promptly. 
	“Brown and white eyes!” exclaimed the 
	friend. “Isn’t that cunning?” 
	Beezus had thought it was cunning the 
	first time she heard Ramona say it, about a 
	year ago. Since then she had given up trying 
	to explain to Ramona that she wasn’t supposed to say she had brown and white eyes, 
	because Ramona always answered,“My eyes 
	are brown and white,” and Beezus had to 
	admit that, in a way, they were. 
	14 
	“And what is the little bunny’s name?” 
	asked Mrs.Wisser’s friend. 
	“My name is Ramona Geraldine 
	Quimby,” answered Ramona, and then added 
	generously,“My sister’s name is Beezus.” 
	“Beezus!” exclaimed the lady. “What an 
	odd name. Is it French?” 
	“Oh, no,” said Beezus. Wishing, as she so 
	often did, that she had a more common 
	nickname, like Betty or Patsy, she explained 
	as quickly as she could how she happened to 
	be called Beezus. 
	Ramona did not like to lose the attention 
	of her audience. She hitched up the leg of 
	her overalls and raised her knee. “See my 
	scab?” she said proudly.“I fell down and hurt 
	my knee and it bled and bled.” 
	“Ramona!” Beezus was horrified. “You 
	aren’t supposed to show people your scabs.” 
	“Why?” asked Ramona. That was one 
	of the most exasperating things about 
	15 
	
	Ramona. She never seemed to understand 
	what she was not supposed to do. 
	“It’s a very nice scab,” said Mrs. Wisser’s 
	friend, but she did not look as if she really 
	thought it was nice. 
	16 
	“Well, we must be going,” said Mrs. 
	Wisser. 
	“Good-by, Mrs. Wisser,” said Beezus 
	politely, and hoped that if they met anyone 
	else they knew she could somehow manage 
	to hide Ramona behind a bush. 
	“By-by, Ramona,” said Mrs.Wisser. 
	“Good-by,” said Ramona, and Beezus 
	knew that she felt that a girl who was four 
	years old was too grown up to say by-by. 
	Except for holding Ramona’s hand crossing streets, Beezus lingered behind her the 
	rest of the way to the library. She hoped that 
	all the people who stopped and smiled at 
	Ramona would not think they were 
	together. When they reached the Glenwood 
	Branch Library, she said,“Ramona, wouldn’t 
	you like me to carry your ears for you 
	now?” 
	“No,” said Ramona flatly. 
	Inside the library, Beezus hurried 
	17 
	Ramona into the boys and girls’ section and 
	seated her on a little chair in front of the 
	picture books. “See, Ramona,” she whispered,“here’s a book about a duck.Wouldn’t 
	you like that?” 
	“No,” said Ramona in a loud voice. 
	Beezus’s face turned red with embarrassment when everyone in the library looked 
	at Ramona’s ears and smiled. “Sh-h,” she 
	whispered, as Miss Greever, the grown-ups’ 
	librarian, frowned in their direction. “You’re 
	supposed to speak quietly in the library.” 
	Beezus selected another book. “Look, 
	Ramona. Here’s a funny story about a kitten 
	that falls into the goldfish bowl. Wouldn’t 
	you like that?” 
	“No,” said Ramona in a loud whisper. “I 
	want to find my own book.” 
	If only Miss Evans, the children’s librarian, 
	were there! She would know how to select a 
	book for Ramona. Beezus noticed Miss 
	18 
	Greever glance disapprovingly in their direction while the other grown-ups watched 
	Ramona and smiled. “All right, you can 
	look,” Beezus agreed, to keep Ramona quiet. 
	“I’ll go find a book for myself.” 
	When Beezus had selected her book, she 
	returned to the picture-book section, where 
	she found Ramona sitting on the bench 
	with both arms clasped around a big flat 
	book. “I found my book,” she said, and held 
	it up for Beezus to see. On the cover was a 
	picture of a steam shovel with its jaws full of 
	rocks.The title was Big Steve the Steam Shovel. 
	“Oh, Ramona,” whispered Beezus in 
	dismay. “You don’t want that book.” 
	“I do, too,” insisted Ramona, forgetting 
	to whisper. “You told me I could pick out 
	my own book.” 
	Under the disapproving stare of Miss 
	Greever, Beezus gave up. Ramona was right. 
	Beezus looked with distaste at the big 
	19 
	orange-colored book in its stout library 
	binding. At least it would be due in two 
	weeks, but Beezus did not feel very happy at 
	the thought of two more weeks of steam 
	shovels. And it just went to show how 
	Ramona always got her own way. 
	Beezus took her book and Ramona’s to 
	Miss Greever’s desk. 
	“Is this where you pay for the books?” 
	asked Ramona. 
	“We don’t have to pay for the books,” 
	said Beezus. 
	“Are you going to charge them?” 
	Ramona asked. 
	Beezus pulled her library card out of her 
	sweater pocket.“I show this card to the lady 
	and she lets us keep the books for two 
	weeks. A library isn’t like a store, where you 
	buy things.” 
	Ramona looked as if she did not understand. “I want a card,” she said. 
	20 
	“You have to be able to write your own 
	name before you can have a library card,” 
	Beezus explained. 
	“I can write my name,” said Ramona. 
	“Oh, Ramona,” said Beezus, “you can’t, 
	either.” 
	“Perhaps she really does know how to 
	write her name,” said Miss Greever, as she 
	took a card out of her desk. Beezus watched 
	doubtfully while Miss Greever asked 
	Ramona her name and age.Then the librarian asked Ramona what her father’s occupation was.When Ramona didn’t understand, 
	she asked, “What kind of work does your 
	father do?” 
	“He mows the lawn,” said Ramona 
	promptly. 
	The librarian laughed.“I mean, how does 
	he earn his living?” 
	Somehow Beezus did not like to have 
	Miss Greever laugh at her little sister. After 
	21 
	
	all, how could Ramona be expected to 
	know what Father did? “He works for 
	Pacific Gas and Electric Company,” Beezus 
	told the librarian. 
	Miss Greever wrote this down on the 
	card and shoved it across the desk to 
	Ramona. “Write your name on this line,” 
	she directed. 
	Nothing daunted, Ramona grasped the 
	pencil in her fist and began to write. She 
	bore down so hard that the tip snapped off 
	the lead, but she wrote on. When she laid 
	down the pencil, Beezus picked up the card 
	to see what she had written.The line on the 
	card was filled with 
SCRIBBLE TK
	“That’s my name,” said Ramona proudly. 
	“That’s just scribbling,” Beezus told her. 
	“It is too my name,” insisted Ramona, 
	22 
	
	while Miss Greever quietly dropped the 
	card into the wastebasket.“I’ve watched you 
	write and I know how.” 
	“Here, Ramona, you can hold my card.” 
	Beezus tried to be comforting. “You can 
	pretend it’s yours.” 
	23 
	Ramona brightened at this, and Miss 
	Greever checked out the books on Beezus’s 
	card. As soon as they got home, Ramona 
	demanded, “Read my new book to me.” 
	And so Beezus began. “Big Steve was a 
	steam shovel. He was the biggest steam 
	shovel in the whole city. . . .” When she finished the book she had to admit she liked 
	Big Steve better than Scoopy. His only 
	sound effects were tooting and growling. He 
	tooted and growled in big letters on every 
	page. Big Steve did not shed tears or want to 
	be a pile driver. He worked hard at being a 
	steam shovel, and by the end of the book 
	Beezus had learned a lot about steam shovels. Unfortunately, she did not want to learn 
	about steam shovels. Oh, well, she guessed 
	she could stand two weeks of Big Steve. 
	“Read it again,” said Ramona enthusiastically. “I like Big Steve. He’s better than 
	Scoopy.” 
	24 
	
	“How would you like me to show you 
	how to really write your name?” Beezus 
	asked, hoping to divert Ramona from steam 
	shovels. 
	“O.K.,” agreed Ramona. 
	Beezus found pencil and paper and wrote 
	Ramona in large, careful letters across the top 
	of the paper. 
	Ramona studied it critically. “I don’t like 
	it,” she said at last. 
	“But that’s the way your name is spelled,” 
	Beezus explained. 
	“You didn’t make dots and lines,” said 
	Ramona. Seizing the pencil, she wrote, 
	“But, Ramona, you don’t under
	” 
	stand. 
	Beezus took the pencil and wrote her own 
	name on the paper. “You’ve seen me write 
	Beatrice, which has an i and a t in it. See, like 
	25 
	
	that. You don’t have an i or a t in your name, 
	because it isn’t spelled that way.” 
	Ramona looked skeptical. She grabbed 
	the pencil again and wrote with a flourish, 
	“That’s my name, because I like it,” she 
	announced. “I like to make dots and lines.” 
	Lying flat on her stomach on the floor she 
	proceeded to fill the paper with i’s and t’s. 
	“But, Ramona, nobody’s name is spelled 
	with just . . .” Beezus stopped.What was the 
	use? Trying to explain spelling and writing 
	to Ramona was too complicated. Everything became difficult when Ramona was 
	around, even an easy thing like taking a 
	book out of the library. Well, if Ramona was 
	happy thinking her name was spelled with 
	i’s and t’s, she could go ahead and think it. 
	The next two weeks were fairly peaceful. 
	26 
	Mother and Father soon tired of tooting and 
	growling and, like Beezus, they looked forward to the day Big Steve was due at the 
	library. Father even tried to hide the book 
	behind the radio, but Ramona soon found 
	it. Beezus was happy that one part of her 
	plan had worked—Ramona had forgotten 
	The Littlest Steam Shovel now that she had a 
	better book. On Ramona’s second trip to 
	the library, perhaps Miss Evans could find a 
	book that would make her forget steam 
	shovels entirely. 
	As for Ramona, she was perfectly happy. 
	She had three people to read aloud a book 
	she liked, and she spent much of her time 
	covering sheets of paper with i’s and t’s. 
	Sometimes she wrote in pencil, sometimes 
	she wrote in crayon, and once she wrote in 
	ink until her mother caught her at it. 
	Finally, to the relief of the rest of the 
	family, the day came when Big Steve had to 
	27 
	be returned. “Come on, Ramona,” said 
	Beezus. “It’s time to go to the library for 
	another book.” 
	“I have a book,” said Ramona, who was 
	lying on her stomach writing her version of 
	her name on a piece of paper with purple 
	crayon. 
	“No, it belongs to the library,” Beezus 
	explained, glad that for once Ramona 
	couldn’t possibly get her own way. 
	“It’s my book,” said Ramona, crossing 
	several t’s with a flourish. 
	“Beezus is right, dear,” observed Mother. 
	“Run along and get Big Steve.” 
	Ramona looked sulky, but she went into 
	the bedroom. In a few minutes she appeared 
	with Big Steve in her hand and a satisfied 
	expression on her face. “It’s my book,” she 
	announced. “I wrote my name in it.” 
	Mother looked alarmed. “What do you 
	mean, Ramona? Let me see.” She took the 
	28 
	book and opened it. Every page in the book 
	was covered with enormous purple i’s and 
	t’s in Ramona’s very best handwriting. 
	“Mother!” cried Beezus. “Look what 
	she’s done! And in crayon so it won’t erase.” 
	“Ramona Quimby,” said Mother.“You’re 
	a very naughty girl! Why did you do a thing 
	like that?” 
	“It’s my book,” said Ramona stubbornly. 
	“I like it.” 
	“Mother, what am I going to do?” 
	Beezus demanded. “It’s checked out on my 
	card and I’m responsible.They won’t let me 
	take any more books out of the library, and 
	I won’t have anything to read, and it will all 
	be Ramona’s fault. She’s always spoiling my 
	fun and it isn’t fair!” Beezus didn’t know 
	what she would do without her library card. 
	She couldn’t get along without library 
	books. She just couldn’t, that was all. 
	“I do not spoil your fun,” stormed 
	29 
	
	Ramona. “You have all the fun. I can’t read 
	and it isn’t fair.” Ramona’s words ended in a 
	howl as she buried her face in her mother’s 
	skirt. 
	“I couldn’t read when I was your age and 
	I didn’t have someone to read to me all the 
	time, so it is too fair,” argued Beezus. “You 
	always get your own way, because you’re the 
	youngest.” 
	“I do not!” shouted Ramona. “And you 
	don’t read all the time.You’re mean!” 
	“I am not mean,” Beezus shouted back. 
	“Children!” cried Mother. “Stop it, both 
	of you! Ramona, you were a very naughty 
	girl!” A loud sniff came from Ramona. 
	“And, Beezus,” her mother continued, “the 
	library won’t take your card away from you. 
	If you’ll get my purse I’ll give you some 
	money to pay for the damage to the book. 
	Take Ramona along with you, explain what 
	happened, and the librarian will tell you 
	how much to pay.” 
	This made Beezus feel better. Ramona 
	sulked all the way to the library, but when 
	they got there Beezus was pleased to see that 
	Miss Evans, the children’s librarian, was sitting behind the desk. Miss Evans was the 
	31 
	kind of librarian who would understand 
	about little sisters. 
	“Hello, Beatrice,” said Miss Evans.“Is this 
	your little sister I’ve heard so much about?” 
	Beezus wondered what Miss Evans had 
	heard about Ramona.“Yes, this is Ramona,” 
	she said and went on hesitantly, “and, Miss 
	Evans, she—” 
	“I’m a bad girl,” interrupted Ramona, 
	smiling winningly at the librarian. 
	“Oh, you are?” said Miss Evans. “What 
	did you do?” 
	“I wrote in a book,” said Ramona, not 
	the least ashamed.“I wrote in purple crayon 
	and it will never, ever erase. Never, never, 
	never.” 
	Embarrassed, Beezus handed Miss Evans 
	Big Steve the Steam Shovel. “Mother gave me 
	the money to pay for the damage,” she 
	explained. 
	The librarian turned the pages of the 
	32 
	book. “Well, you didn’t miss a page, did 
	you?” she finally said to Ramona. 
	“No,” said Ramona, pleased with herself. 
	“And it will never, never—” 
	“I’m awfully sorry,” interrupted Beezus. 
	“After this I’ll try to keep our library books 
	where she can’t reach them.” 
	Miss Evans consulted a file of little cards 
	in a drawer. “Since every page in the book 
	was damaged and the library can no longer 
	use it, I’ll have to ask you to pay for the 
	whole book. I’m sorry, but this is the rule. It 
	will cost two dollars and fifty cents.” 
	Two dollars and fifty cents! What a lot of 
	things that would have bought, Beezus 
	reflected, as she pulled three folded dollar 
	bills out of her pocket and handed them to 
	the librarian. Miss Evans put the money in a 
	drawer and gave Beezus fifty cents in 
	change. 
	Then Miss Evans took a rubber stamp 
	33 
	and stamped something inside the book. By 
	twisting her head around, Beezus could see 
	that the word was Discarded. “There!” Miss 
	Evans said, pushing the book across the 
	desk. “You have paid for it, so now it’s 
	yours.” 
	Beezus stared at the librarian. “You 
	mean . . . to keep?” 
	“That’s right,” answered Miss Evans. 
	Ramona grabbed the book. “It’s mine. I 
	told you it was mine!” Then she turned to 
	Beezus and said triumphantly, “You said 
	people didn’t buy books at the library and 
	now you just bought one!” 
	“Buying a book and paying for damage 
	are not the same thing,” Miss Evans pointed 
	out to Ramona. 
	Beezus could see that Ramona didn’t 
	care. The book was hers, wasn’t it? It was 
	paid for and she could keep it. And that’s not 
	fair, thought Beezus. Ramona shouldn’t get 
	34 
	her own way when she had been naughty. 
	“But, Miss Evans,” protested Beezus, “if 
	she spoils a book she shouldn’t get to keep 
	it. Now every time she finds a book she likes 
	she will . . .” Beezus did not go on. She knew 
	very well what Ramona would do, but she 
	wasn’t going to say it out loud in front of 
	her. 
	“I see what you mean.” Miss Evans 
	looked thoughtful. “Give me the book, 
	Ramona,” she said. 
	Doubtfully Ramona handed her the 
	book. 
	“Ramona, do you have a library card?” 
	Miss Evans asked. 
	Ramona shook her head. 
	“Then Beezus must have taken the book 
	out on her card,” said Miss Evans. “So the 
	book belongs to Beezus.” 
	Why, of course! Why hadn’t she thought of 
	that before? It was her book, not Ramona’s. 
	35 
	“Oh, thank you,” said Beezus gratefully, as 
	Miss Evans handed the book to her. She 
	could do anything she wanted with it. 
	For once Ramona didn’t know what to 
	say. She scowled and looked as if she were 
	building up to a tantrum. “You’ve got to 
	read it to me,” she said at last. 
	“Not unless I feel like it,” said Beezus. 
	“After all, it’s my book,” she couldn’t resist 
	adding. 
	“That’s no fair!” Ramona looked as if she 
	were about to howl. 
	“It is too fair,” said Beezus calmly. “And 
	if you have a tantrum I won’t read to you at 
	all.” 
	Suddenly, as if she had decided Beezus 
	meant what she said, Ramona stopped 
	scowling. “O.K.,” she said cheerfully. 
	Beezus watched her carefully for a 
	minute. Yes, she really was being agreeable, 
	thought Beezus with a great feeling of relief. 
	36 
	And now that she did not have to read Big 
	Steve unless she wanted to, Beezus felt she 
	would not mind reading it once in a while. 
	“Come on, Ramona,” she said. “Maybe I’ll 
	have time to read to you before Father 
	comes home.” 
	“O.K.,” said Ramona happily, as she took 
	Beezus’s hand. 
	Miss Evans smiled at the girls as they 
	started to leave. “Good luck, Beatrice,” she 
	said. 
	37 
	2 
	Beezus and 
	Her Imagination 
	Beezus and Ramona both looked forward 
	to Friday afternoons after school— 
	Beezus because she attended the art class in 
	the recreation center in Glenwood Park, 
	Ramona because she was allowed to go to 
	the park with Beezus and play in the sand 
	pile until the class was over. This Friday 
	while Beezus held Ramona by the hand and 
	waited for the traffic light to change from 
	38 
	red to green, she thought how wonderful it 
	would be to have an imagination like 
	Ramona’s. 
	“Oh, you know Ramona. Her imagination runs away with her,” Mother said, when 
	Ramona made up a story about seeing a fire 
	engine crash into a garbage truck. 
	“That child has an imagination a mile 
	long,” the Quimbys’ grown-up friends 
	remarked when Ramona sat in the middle 
	of the living-room floor in a plastic wading 
	pool she had dragged up from the basement 
	and pretended she was in a boat in the 
	middle of the lake. 
	“Did you ever see so much imagination 
	in such a little girl?” the neighbors asked 
	one another when Ramona hopped around 
	the yard pretending she was the Easter 
	bunny. 
	One spring day Ramona had got lost, 
	because she started out to find the pot of 
	39 
	gold at the end of the rainbow.The rainbow 
	had appeared to end in the park until she 
	reached the park, but then it looked as if it 
	ended behind the Supermarket. When the 
	police brought Ramona home, Father said, 
	“Sometimes I think Ramona has too much 
	imagination.” 
	Nobody, reflected Beezus, ever says anything about my imagination. Nobody at all. 
	And she wished, more than anything, that 
	she had imagination. How pleased Miss 
	Robbins, the art teacher, would be with her 
	if she had an imagination like Ramona’s! 
	Unfortunately, Beezus was not very good 
	at painting—as least not the way Miss 
	Robbins wanted boys and girls to paint. She 
	wanted them to use their imagination and 
	to feel free. Beezus still squirmed with 
	embarrassment when she thought of her 
	first painting, a picture of a dog with bowwow 
	coming out of his mouth in a balloon. 
	40 
	Miss Robbins pointed out that only in the 
	funny papers did dogs have bowwow coming 
	out of their mouths in balloons. Bowwow in a 
	balloon was not art.When Miss Robbins did 
	think one of Beezus’s paintings was good 
	enough to put up on the wall, she always 
	tacked it way down at the end, never in the 
	center. Beezus wished she could have a 
	painting in the center of the wall. 
	“Hurry up, Ramona,” Beezus coaxed. 
	Then she noticed that her sister was dragging a string along behind her. “Oh, 
	Ramona,” she protested, “why did you have 
	to bring Ralph with you?” Ralph was an 
	imaginary green lizard Ramona liked to 
	pretend she was leading by a string. 
	“I love Ralph,” said Ramona firmly, “and 
	Ralph likes to go to the park.” 
	Beezus knew it was easier to pretend 
	along with Ramona than to make her stop. 
	Anyway, it was better to have her pretend to 
	41 
	
	lead a lizard than to pretend to be a lizard 
	herself. “Can’t you carry him?” she suggested. 
	“No,” said Ramona. “He’s slimy.” 
	When the girls came to the shopping district, Ramona had to stop at the drugstore 
	42 
	scales and pretend to weigh herself while 
	Beezus held Ralph’s string. “I weigh fiftyeleven pounds,” she announced, while Beezus 
	smiled at Ramona’s idea of her weight. It 
	just goes to show how much imagination 
	Ramona has, she thought. 
	At the radio-and-phonograph store 
	Ramona insisted on petting His Master’s 
	Voice, the black-and-white plaster dog, 
	bigger than Ramona, that always sat with 
	one ear cocked in front of the door. Beezus 
	thought admiringly about the amount of 
	imagination it took to pretend that a scarred 
	and chipped plaster dog was real. If only she 
	had an imagination like Ramona’s, maybe 
	Miss Robbins would say her paintings were 
	free and imaginative and would tack them 
	on the middle of the wall. 
	When they reached the park, Beezus left 
	Ramona and Ralph at the sand pile and, 
	feeling more and more discouraged at her 
	43 
	own lack of imagination, hurried to the 
	recreation center. The class had already 
	poured paints into their muffin tins and 
	were painting on paper thumbtacked to 
	drawing boards. The room hummed with 
	activity. Miss Robbins, wearing a gay paintsmeared smock, flew from one artist to 
	another, praising, correcting, suggesting. 
	Beezus waited until Miss Robbins finished explaining to a boy that he should not 
	outline a mouth with black paint. Her 
	mouth wasn’t outlined in black, was it? 
	Then Beezus said,“I’m sorry I’m late, Miss 
	Robbins.” She stared in fascination at Miss 
	Robbins’s earrings.They came almost to her 
	shoulders and were made of silver wire 
	twisted and bent into interesting shapes— 
	not the shape of anything in particular, just 
	interesting shapes. 
	“That’s all right.” Miss Robbins, her earrings swinging, smiled at Beezus. “Get your 
	44 
	paints and paper.Today everyone is painting 
	an imaginary animal.” 
	“An imaginary animal?” Beezus repeated 
	blankly. How could she possibly think of an 
	imaginary animal? As Beezus poured paints 
	into her muffin tin and tacked a sheet of 
	paper to her drawing board, she tried to 
	think of an imaginary animal, but all the 
	animals she could think of—cats and dogs, 
	cows and horses, lions and giraffes—were 
	discouragingly real. 
	Reluctantly Beezus took the only vacant 
	seat, which was beside a boy named Wayne 
	who came to the class only because his 
	mother made him. Once Beezus had hung 
	her sweater on the back of a chair, and Wayne 
	had printed “Post No Bills” on it in chalk. 
	Beezus had worn it all the way home before 
	she discovered it. Since then she did not 
	care to sit beside Wayne.Today she noticed he 
	had parked a grape-flavored lollipop on a 
	45 
	paper towel beside his muffin tin of paints. 
	“Hi, Beez,” he greeted her. “No fair licking my sucker.” 
	“I don’t want your old sucker,” answered 
	Beezus. “And don’t call me Beez.” 
	“O.K., Beez,” said Wayne. 
	At that moment the door opened and 
	Ramona walked into the room. She was still 
	dragging the string behind her and she 
	looked angry. 
	“Why, hello,” said Miss Robbins pleasantly. 
	“Oh, Ramona, you’re supposed to be 
	playing in the sand pile,” said Beezus, going 
	over to her. 
	“No,” said Ramona flatly. “Howie threw 
	sand on Ralph.” Her dark eyes were busy 
	taking in the paints, the brushes, the drawing 
	boards.“I’m going to paint,” she announced. 
	“Mother said you were supposed to play 
	in the sand pile,” protested Beezus. “You’re 
	46 
	too little for this class.” 
	“You say that about everything,” complained Ramona. Then she turned to Miss 
	Robbins. “Don’t step on Ralph,” she said. 
	“Ralph is a make-believe green lizard she 
	pretends she leads around on a string.” 
	Beezus was embarrassed at having to explain 
	such a silly thing. 
	Miss Robbins laughed. “Well, here is a 
	little girl with lots of imagination. How 
	would you like to paint a picture of Ralph 
	for us, Ramona?” 
	Beezus could not help feeling annoyed. 
	Miss Robbins was letting Ramona stay in 
	the class—the one place where she was 
	never allowed to tag along! Miss Robbins 
	would probably like her painting, because it 
	would be so full of imagination. Ramona’s 
	pictures, in fact, were so full of imagination 
	that it took even more imagination to tell 
	what they were. 
	47 
	Ramona beamed at Miss Robbins, who 
	found a drawing board for her and a stool, 
	which she placed between Beezus and 
	Wayne. She lifted Ramona onto the stool. 
	“There. Now you can share your sister’s 
	paints,” she said. 
	Ramona looked impressed at being 
	allowed to paint with such big boys and 
	girls. She sat quietly on her stool, watching 
	everything around her. 
	Maybe she’ll behave herself after all, 
	thought Beezus as she dipped her brush into 
	blue paint, and now I don’t have to sit next 
	to Wayne. Since Beezus still had not thought 
	of an imaginary animal, she decided to start 
	with the sky. 
	“Do the sky first,” Beezus whispered to 
	Ramona, who looked as if she did not know 
	how to begin. Then Beezus faced her own 
	work, determined to be free and imaginative. To be free on a piece of paper was not 
	48 
	
	as easy as it sounded, she thought. Miss 
	Robbins always said to start with the big 
	areas of a picture and paint them bravely and 
	boldly, so Beezus spread the sky on her 
	paper with brave, bold strokes. Back and 
	forth across the paper she swept her brush. 
	Brave and bold and free—that was the way 
	to do it. 
	49 
	Her sky turned out to be too wet, so 
	while it dried a little, Beezus looked at what 
	the other boys and girls were doing. Celia, 
	who sat on her left, had already filled in a 
	brave, bold background of pink, which she 
	had sprinkled with big purple dots. Now 
	she was painting a long gray line that wound 
	all over her paper, in and out around the 
	dots. 
	“What’s that supposed to be?” whispered 
	Beezus. 
	“I’m not sure yet,” answered Celia. 
	Beezus felt better, because Celia was the 
	kind of girl who usually knew exactly what 
	she was doing and whose pictures were 
	often tacked in the center of the wall. The 
	boy on the other side of Celia, who always 
	wanted to paint airplanes, was painting what 
	looked like a giraffe made of pieces of 
	machinery, and another boy was painting a 
	thing that had two heads. 
	50 
	Beezus looked across Ramona to Wayne. 
	He had not bothered with a sky at all. He 
	had painted a hen. Beezus knew it was a 
	hen, because he had printed in big letters, 
	“This is a real hen,” with an arrow pointing 
	to it. Wayne always tried to do just the 
	opposite of what Miss Robbins wanted. 
	“Hey, quit peeking,” said Wayne in a loud 
	voice. 
	“I’m not peeking,” said Beezus, hastily 
	trying to look as if she had been interested 
	in Ramona’s paper all the time. 
	Ramona had dipped her brush into blue 
	paint and had painted a blue stripe across the 
	top of her paper. “That’s the sky,” she said 
	happily. 
	“But that’s not the way the sky is.” Beezus 
	was trying to be helpful. She felt better, 
	because Ramona had not plunged in and 
	painted a picture full of imagination. “Skies 
	should come farther down on the paper.” 
	51 
	“The sky is up,” said Ramona firmly. 
	Beezus decided she couldn’t waste time 
	explaining about skies, not when she still 
	hadn’t thought of an imaginary animal. 
	Maybe she could take a real animal and sort of 
	change it around. Let’s see, she thought, I 
	could take a horse and put feathers on it. No, 
	all those feathers would be too hard to paint. 
	Wings? That was it! A horse with wings was 
	an imaginary animal—a real imaginary 
	animal—because Mother had once read 
	aloud a story about Pegasus, the winged 
	horse, out of a library book. In the story 
	Pegasus had been white, which was a real 
	horse color. Beezus decided to be extraimaginative. She would make her horse 
	green—a green horse against a blue sky. Miss 
	Robbins ought to like that. Beezus did not 
	think blue and green looked very pretty 
	together, but Miss Robbins often liked colors 
	that Beezus thought did not really go together. 
	52 
	Beezus dipped her brush into green paint 
	and outlined a wing against the sky. Next 
	she outlined the body of the horse and a 
	long tail that hung down. It was a magnificent horse. At least, Beezus hoped it would 
	look magnificent when she finished it. 
	Anyway, it was big, because Miss Robbins 
	liked her artists to cover the whole paper. 
	Quickly and neatly Beezus filled in the outline of the horse, because Miss Robbins, 
	who was looking at Celia’s picture, would 
	look at hers next. Somehow the horse was 
	not exactly what Beezus had in her mind’s 
	eye, but even so, compared to whatever 
	Celia was painting, a green horse with wings 
	was really a very good imaginary animal. 
	And except for a few soggy places in the sky, 
	her work was much neater than Celia’s. 
	Beezus waited for Miss Robbins to point 
	this out. 
	Instead, Miss Robbins said, “Celia, your 
	53 
	picture is work to be proud of. It is a difficult thing to get to be as free as this.” 
	Then Miss Robbins moved on to Beezus, 
	her long earrings swinging forward as she 
	leaned over the drawing board. Beezus 
	waited anxiously. Maybe her picture wasn’t 
	so good, after all. If Miss Robbins liked a 
	gray line winding around a lot of purple 
	dots, maybe she wouldn’t like a flying horse. 
	Maybe she liked things with no special 
	shape, like those earrings. 
	“You have a good sky even if it is a little 
	wet,” said Miss Robbins. 
	Beezus was disappointed. Anybody could 
	have a good sky. 
	Miss Robbins continued to study the 
	picture. “Try to think how a horse would 
	look if it were really flying.” 
	Beezus tried to think. 
	“What about the tail?” asked Miss 
	Robbins. “Wouldn’t the tail fly out behind 
	54 
	instead of hanging down?” 
	“Especially if the wind blew real hard,” 
	said Wayne. 
	“Can’t you make the horse look 
	rounder?” asked Miss Robbins.“Think how 
	a horse looks with the sun shining on him. 
	Part of him would be in shadow.” 
	“Not that horse,” said Wayne. “She just 
	copied it off a Mobilgas billboard, only she 
	made it green instead of red.” 
	“I did not!” said Beezus indignantly.Then 
	she stared at her painting again. Now that 
	Wayne pointed it out, she could see her 
	horse did look like the one on the Mobilgas 
	billboard at the service station where her 
	father bought gasoline. He was a flat cardboard horse, not a magnificent horse at all. 
	Her horse wasn’t even as good as the horse 
	on the billboard, because instead of a flying 
	tail he had a tail that hung down like . . . 
	well, like a mop. 
	55 
	“All right, Wayne,” said Miss Robbins. 
	“I’m sure Beezus did not mean to copy anything from a billboard.” 
	“No, I didn’t,” said Beezus mournfully. “I 
	was only trying to change a real animal 
	around to make it imaginary, but I just don’t 
	have imagination, is all.” 
	“Why, Beezus, of course you have imagination!” 
	Miss Robbins sounded shocked at the 
	idea of anyone’s not having imagination. 
	“My little sister has lots of imagination,” 
	said Beezus. “Everybody says so.” 
	Miss Robbins smiled reassuringly. “That 
	doesn’t mean that you don’t have any. I 
	think your trouble is that you work too 
	hard. You don’t have to be so neat. Why 
	don’t you start another painting and just try 
	to have a good time with your paints?” 
	Beezus looked uncertain. It was a nice 
	change to have a grown-up tell her she 
	56 
	didn’t have to be neat, but she didn’t understand how she could paint a good picture 
	unless she worked at it. If only she had some 
	imagination, like Ramona—but no, Miss 
	Robbins said everybody had imagination. 
	Well, if she had imagination, where was it? 
	Why wasn’t it helping her with her imaginary animal? All she could think of was that 
	cardboard horse on the billboard. 
	Beezus glanced at Ramona, who had 
	been surprisingly quiet for a long time, to 
	see how she was coming along with her picture of Ralph. Except for the stripe of sky at 
	the top, Ramona’s paper was blank. Now 
	she dipped her brush in yellow paint, 
	divided the hairs of the brush into three 
	tufts, and pressed them on the paper, leaving 
	a mark like the track of a bird. 
	“That’s not the way to use a paint brush,” 
	said Beezus.“Besides, you’re getting paint on 
	your fingers.” 
	57 
	“Look—Ralph’s feet marks,” exclaimed 
	Ramona, paying no attention to Beezus. 
	“You mean footprints,” corrected Beezus. 
	“Now go on and paint the rest of Ralph.” 
	“Feet marks,” said Ramona stubbornly, 
	making more footprints across the paper. 
	“And I can’t paint him, because he’s just pretend.” 
	Oh, well, thought Beezus, maybe making 
	footprints isn’t good for the brush, but it 
	keeps her quiet. She dabbled her own brush 
	in green paint and tried to stir up her imagination. She felt a little encouraged because 
	Ramona was having trouble too. 
	“Hey!” interrupted Wayne in a loud 
	voice. “She’s licking my sucker!” 
	“Ramona!” Beezus was horrified to see 
	Ramona, no longer interested in footprints, 
	calmly sucking Wayne’s grape-flavored lollipop. “Ramona, put that down this instant! 
	You’re not supposed to lick other people’s 
	suckers.” 
	58 
	“You give me that!” Wayne made a grab 
	for his lollipop. 
	“No!” screamed Ramona, trying to hold 
	it out of his reach. “I want it!” 
	“Ramona, give it to him,” ordered 
	Beezus. “It’s all germy.” 
	“You mean she’s getting germs on it,” 
	said Wayne. “Give it to me!” 
	The rest of the class stopped painting to 
	watch. Wayne made another grab for his 
	lollipop. This time he grabbed Ramona by 
	the wrist. 
	“Let go of her!” said Beezus angrily. 
	Ramona howled as Wayne tried to pry 
	her fingers loose from the lollipop stick. He 
	knocked against his muffin tin, which 
	flipped into the air spattering paint over the 
	table, the drawing boards, and the floor. 
	Ramona was splashed with red and yellow 
	paint. Blue and green ran down Wayne’s 
	jeans onto his sneakers. A pool of brown 
	paint dripped off the table onto the floor. 
	59 
	
	“Now see what you did,” said Wayne, 
	after he had pried his sucker out of 
	Ramona’s fist. 
	“See what you did,” contradicted Beezus. 
	“Picking on my little sister like that!” She 
	picked up the paper towel the sucker had 
	60 
	been resting on and began to wipe the spatters off Ramona, who continued to howl. 
	“Boys and girls!” Miss Robbins raised her 
	voice. “Let’s be quiet. When the room is 
	quiet I know you are thinking. Lots of 
	people don’t know you have to think while 
	you paint.” Then she turned to Wayne. “All 
	right,Wayne, you may get a damp cloth and 
	wipe up the paint.” 
	“I’m sorry, Miss Robbins,” said Beezus. 
	“I want the sucker!” screamed Ramona. 
	Suddenly Beezus decided she had had 
	enough. This art class was one place where 
	Ramona was not supposed to be. She was 
	supposed to play in the sand pile. Mother 
	had said so. She was not supposed to upset 
	the class and spoil everything with one of 
	her tantrums. Beezus made up her mind she 
	was going to do something about it and 
	right now, too, though she didn’t know 
	what. 
	61 
	“Ramona, stop that this instant,” Beezus 
	ordered. “Go out and play in the sand pile, 
	where you belong, or I’ll . . . I’ll . . .” 
	Frantically Beezus tried to think what she 
	could do. Then she had an inspiration. “Or 
	I’ll tickle you!” she finished. I guess I do 
	have some imagination, after all, she thought 
	triumphantly. 
	Instantly Ramona stopped crying. She 
	hugged herself and stared at Beezus. “Don’t 
	tickle, Beezus,” she begged. “Please don’t 
	tickle.” 
	“Then go out and play in the sand pile, 
	like Mother says you’re supposed to,” said 
	Beezus. 
	“Don’t tickle,” shrieked Ramona, as she 
	scrambled down from her stool and ran out 
	the door. 
	Well! thought Beezus. It worked! It really 
	worked! 
	Feeling suddenly lighthearted, she tacked 
	62 
	a fresh sheet of paper to her drawing board 
	and sat staring at it. Maybe Ramona didn’t 
	have so much imagination after all, if she 
	couldn’t draw a picture of an imaginary 
	green lizard. Well, if Ramona couldn’t paint 
	a picture of Ralph, she could. Ramona was 
	not the only one in the family with imagination. So there! 
	Beezus seized her brush and painted in 
	another sky with bold, free strokes.Then she 
	dipped her brush into green paint and 
	started to outline a lizard on her paper. Let’s 
	see, what did a lizard look like? She could 
	not remember. It didn’t matter much, 
	anyway—not for an imaginary animal. She 
	had started the lizard with such brave, bold 
	strokes that it took up most of the paper and 
	looked more like a dragon. 
	Beezus promptly decided the animal was 
	a dragon. Dragons breathed fire, but she did 
	not have any orange paint, and she was so 
	63 
	late in starting this picture that she didn’t 
	want to take time to mix any. She dipped 
	her brush into pink paint instead and made 
	flames come out of the dragon’s mouth. 
	Only they didn’t look like flames. They 
	looked more like the spun-sugar candy 
	Beezus had once eaten at the circus. And a 
	dragon breathing clouds of pink candy was 
	more fun than an ordinary flame-breathing 
	dragon. 
	Forgetting everyone around her, Beezus 
	made the pink clouds bigger and fluffier. 
	Dragons had pointed things down their 
	backs, so Beezus made a row of spines down 
	the back. They did not look quite right— 
	more like slanting sticks than spines. 
	Lollipop sticks, of course! 
	At that Beezus laughed to herself. 
	Naturally a dragon that breathed pink spun 
	sugar would have lollipops down its back. 
	Eagerly she dipped her brush into red paint 
	64 
	and put a strawberry lollipop on one of the 
	sticks. She painted a different flavor on each 
	stick, finishing with a grape-flavored lollipop 
	like the one Wayne and Ramona had shared. 
	Then she held her drawing board at arm’s 
	length. She was pleased with her dragon. It 
	was funny and colorful and really imaginary. 
	Beezus wondered what she should do next. 
	Then she remembered that Miss Robbins 
	often said it was important for an artist to 
	know when to stop painting. Maybe she’d 
	spoil her picture if she added anything. No, 
	just one more touch. She dipped her brush 
	in yellow paint and gave the dragon an 
	eye—a lemon-drop eye. There! Her imaginary animal was finished! 
	By that time it was four-thirty and most 
	of the boys and girls had put away their 
	drawing boards and washed their muffin 
	tins. Several mothers who had come for 
	their children were wandering around the 
	65 
	room looking at the paintings. 
	“Those who have finished, wash your 
	hands clean,” said Miss Robbins. “And I 
	mean clean.” Then she came across the room 
	to Beezus. “Why, Beezus!” she exclaimed. 
	“This is a picture to be proud of!” 
	“I didn’t know whether a dragon should 
	have lollipops down his back or not, but 
	they were fun to paint,” said Beezus. 
	“Of course he can have lollipops down 
	his back. It’s a splendid idea.After all, no one 
	has ever seen a dragon, so no one knows 
	how one should look.” Miss Robbins 
	turned to several of the mothers and said, 
	with admiration in her voice, “Here’s a girl 
	with real imagination.” 
	Beezus smiled modestly at her toes while 
	the mothers admired her picture. 
	“We’ll tack this in the very center of the 
	wall for next week’s classes to see,” said Miss 
	Robbins. 
	66 
	
	“It was fun to paint,” confided Beezus, 
	her face flushed with pleasure. 
	“Of course it was,” said Miss Robbins, as 
	she carefully placed the picture in the center 
	of the wall. “Didn’t I tell you you worked 
	too hard at painting before?” 
	Beezus nodded. That was the wonderful 
	thing about it, she thought, as she scrubbed 
	67 
	out her muffin tins. Her dragon had been 
	fun, while her flying horse had been work. 
	And she had imagination. Maybe not as 
	much as Ramona, but real imagination just 
	the same. “Here’s a girl with real imagination,” Miss Robbins had said. 
	A girl with real imagination, a girl with 
	real imagination, Beezus thought as she left 
	the building and ran across the park to the 
	sand pile. “Come on, Ramona, it’s time to 
	go home,” she called to her little sister, who 
	was happily sprinkling sand on a sleeping 
	dog.“And let’s not forget Ralph!” Good old 
	Ralph! 
	68 
	3 
	Ramona and Ribsy 
	One day after school Henry Huggins, 
	who lived in the next block, came over 
	to play checkers with Beezus. His dog Ribsy 
	came with him, because Henry never went 
	anywhere without Ribsy. Beezus liked 
	Henry, because she knew he thought she 
	had more sense than most girls, and the two 
	often played checkers together. So far 
	Beezus had won forty-eight games and 
	69 
	
	Henry had won forty-nine, not counting 
	the games Ramona had spoiled by tipping 
	over the checkerboard. 
	This afternoon Beezus and Henry knelt 
	on either side of the coffee table with the 
	checkerboard between them. Ribsy lay on 
	the rug near Henry and warily watched 
	70 
	Ramona, who was wearing her rabbit ears 
	and riding her tricycle around the living 
	room. 
	“Your move,” said Henry to Beezus. 
	“I want to play,” said Ramona, riding her 
	tricycle up to the coffee table and shaking 
	her head to make her ears flop. Ribsy got 
	up and moved to a corner, where he lay 
	down with his nose on his paws to watch 
	Ramona. 
	“You’re too little,” said Beezus, as she 
	moved a checker. “Besides, only two can 
	play checkers.” 
	“We could play tiddlywinks,” said Ramona. 
	“I know how to play tiddlywinks.” 
	Beezus did not answer. Her mind was on 
	the game as she watched Henry’s move very 
	carefully. 
	“I said we could play tiddlywinks,” yelled 
	Ramona. 
	Beezus looked up from the checkerboard. 
	71 
	“Ramona, you stop bothering us,” she said in 
	her severest voice. 
	Ramona scowled and pedaled backwards 
	away from the coffee table while Beezus 
	returned to her game and studied the board. 
	She had to be careful, because Henry had 
	already captured half of her checkers. Let’s 
	see, she thought, I could move from here to 
	there—no, that wouldn’t work, because then 
	he could—but if I move from there to 
	there—yes, that was it! Beezus lifted her 
	hand to pick up the checker. 
	At that instant Ramona pedaled as fast as 
	she could toward the coffee table. Crash! 
	The front wheel of Ramona’s tricycle 
	rammed into the table. Checkers bounced 
	into the air and showered over the table, 
	falling to the floor and rolling across the rug. 
	“There!” said Ramona, and calmly pedaled away. 
	“Hey!” protested Henry. 
	72 
	“Mother!” Beezus called. “Ramona’s 
	bothering us!” 
	Wiping her hands on her apron, Mother 
	came out of the kitchen. “Ramona, you 
	know you’re not supposed to bother Henry 
	and Beezus when they’re playing checkers. 
	Now go to your room and stay there until 
	you are able to behave yourself.” 
	“No,” said Ramona. “I don’t have anybody to play with me and I want Beezus 
	and Henry to play with me.” 
	“You heard me.” Mother lifted Ramona 
	off the tricycle. 
	I’ll bet she has a tantrum, thought 
	Beezus, as she picked up the checkers. 
	“No!” screamed Ramona. 
	“Ramona,” said Mother in a warning 
	voice, “I’m going to count to ten.” 
	Ramona threw herself on the floor and 
	kicked and screamed. 
	“One . . . two . . .” began Mother. 
	73 
	
	Ramona went on kicking and screaming 
	until Mother counted to seven.Then she lay 
	still on the floor, watching to see if Mother 
	really meant what she said. 
	“Eight . . . nine,” said Mother. 
	Ramona got to her feet, ran into the 
	bedroom, and slammed the door. Mother 
	74 
	returned to the kitchen, and Beezus and 
	Henry started a new game as if nothing had 
	happened.Tantrums were not unusual in the 
	Quimby household. Even Henry knew that. 
	In a few minutes Beezus heard Ramona 
	open the bedroom door. “Now can I come 
	out?” she called. 
	“Can you stop bothering Beezus and 
	Henry?” Mother asked from the kitchen. 
	“No,” said Ramona, and shut the door. 
	Not more than one minute later Ramona 
	opened the door again and came into the 
	living room. “I can stop bothering,” she said 
	with a sulky look on her face, and Beezus 
	could see she was still cross because she had 
	been punished. 
	“That’s good,” called Mother. “Come 
	here, and I’ll give you a cookie.” 
	Seeing Ramona go into the kitchen, 
	Ribsy sat up, scratched, and trotted after her. 
	Although Ribsy did not trust Ramona, he 
	75 
	was always interested in what went on in a 
	kitchen. 
	I hope she stays in the kitchen, thought 
	Beezus, as she picked up a checker and 
	skipped from here to there to there and captured two of Henry’s men. The game 
	became so exciting that Beezus almost 
	forgot about Ramona. At the same time she 
	was vaguely aware of scuffling sounds in the 
	hall. Then she heard the jingle of Ribsy’s 
	license tags and the click of his claws on the 
	hardwood floor. Ribsy gave a short bark. 
	Then the bathroom door slammed. I 
	wonder what Ramona is doing, thought 
	Beezus, as she captured another checker, but 
	she did not much care so long as Ramona 
	did not interrupt the game. 
	“Let me in!” screamed Ramona from the 
	hall. “Let me in the bathroom.” 
	“Ramona, who are you talking to?” asked 
	Mother as she went into the hall. 
	76 
	
	“Ribsy,” said Ramona, and beat on the 
	door with her fists. 
	Ribsy began to bark. From behind the 
	bathroom door his barks made a hollow, 
	echoing sound. Puzzled, Henry looked at 
	Beezus. Ribsy in the bathroom? Henry 
	decided he had better investigate. Reluctantly 
	Beezus left the game and followed him into 
	the hall. 
	“Open the door and let him out,” said 
	Mother. 
	“I can’t,” shouted Ramona angrily, above 
	Ribsy’s furious barks. “The bad old dog 
	went and locked the door.” 
	“Oh, stop pretending.” Beezus was exasperated with Ramona for interrupting the 
	game a second time. It was too bad that a 
	girl couldn’t have a friend over for a game of 
	checkers without her little sister spoiling all 
	her fun. 
	“I’m not pretending,” screamed Ramona, 
	78 
	clinging to the doorknob while Ribsy 
	barked and scratched at the other side of the 
	door. 
	“Ramona!” Mother’s voice was stern.“Let 
	that dog out.” 
	“I can’t,” cried Ramona, rattling the 
	bathroom door. “The bad old dog locked 
	me out.” 
	“Nonsense. Dogs can’t lock doors,” 
	scolded Mother. “Now open that door and 
	let him out.” 
	Ramona began to sob and Ribsy barked 
	louder. Ramona gave the door a good hard 
	kick. 
	“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” muttered Henry. 
	“Ramona, I am very cross with you,” said 
	Mother. She pried Ramona’s fingers loose 
	and started to open the door.The knob would 
	not turn.“That’s strange,” she remarked, and 
	rattled the door herself. Then she hit the 
	door with her fist to see if it might be stuck. 
	79 
	The door did not budge. There was no 
	doubt about it. The bathroom door was 
	locked. 
	“But how could it be locked?” Henry 
	asked. 
	“I told you Ribsy locked it,” Ramona 
	shouted. 
	“Don’t be silly,” said Beezus impatiently. 
	“Now how on earth—” began Mother in 
	a puzzled voice and then she interrupted 
	herself. “Do you suppose when Ribsy was 
	pawing at the door he bumped against the 
	button in the center of the knob and really 
	did lock the door? Of course! That’s exactly 
	what must have happened.” 
	A dog that locked the bathroom door! 
	That Ribsy, thought Beezus. He’s always 
	getting into trouble, and now he’s locked the 
	Quimbys out of their bathroom. 
	“I told you he locked the door,” Ramona 
	said. 
	80 
	“Yes, but what was my dog doing in 
	the bathroom in the first place?” Henry 
	demanded. 
	“I put him there,” said Ramona. 
	“Ramona Quimby!” Even Mother 
	sounded exasperated. “Sometimes I don’t 
	know what gets into you. You know dogs 
	don’t belong in the bathroom. Now go to 
	your room and stay there until I tell you to 
	come out.” 
	“Yes, but—” Ramona began. 
	“I don’t want to have to speak to you 
	again.” It was unusual for Mother to be as 
	stern as this. 
	Still crying, Ramona went to her room, 
	which was next to the bathroom. Since 
	Mother had not told her to close the door, 
	Ramona stood just inside it and waited to 
	see what would happen next. 
	“Where is the key?” Beezus asked. 
	“I don’t know,” answered Mother.“I don’t 
	81 
	remember that we ever had a key.” 
	“But there’s a keyhole,” said Beezus. 
	“There must be a key.” 
	“Ribsy, be quiet,” ordered Henry. “We’ll 
	get you out.” But Ribsy only barked harder, 
	and his barks echoed and re-echoed around 
	the small room. 
	“No one gave us a key to the bathroom 
	when we rented the house,” explained 
	Mother. “And when Ramona first learned 
	to walk we fastened the button down with 
	Scotch tape so she couldn’t lock herself in.” 
	“You did?” Ramona, fascinated with this 
	bit of information about herself, stopped 
	crying and leaned out into the hall. “How 
	big was I then?” No one bothered to 
	answer her. 
	“We’ve got to get Ribsy out of the bathroom,” said Beezus. 
	“Yes,” agreed Mother, “but how?” 
	“If you have a ladder I’ll climb in the 
	82 
	bathroom window and unlock the door,” 
	Henry offered. 
	“The window is locked too,” said 
	Mother, bending over to examine the knob 
	on the door. 
	“Maybe we could call the fire department.” Henry tried another suggestion. 
	“They’re always rescuing cats and things.” 
	“They couldn’t do anything with the 
	bathroom window locked,” Beezus pointed 
	out. 
	“I guess that’s right.” Henry sounded disappointed. It would have been exciting to 
	have the fire department rescue Ribsy. 
	“Well, I just can’t see any way to take the 
	knob off,” said Mother. “There aren’t any 
	screws on this side of the door.” 
	“We’ve got to get him out some way,” 
	said Henry. “We can’t leave him in there. 
	He’ll get hungry.” 
	Beezus did not think this remark of 
	83 
	Henry’s was very thoughtful. Of course 
	Ribsy would get hungry if he stayed in the 
	bathroom long enough, but on the other 
	hand they would need their bathroom and it 
	was Henry’s dog who had locked them out. 
	Then Beezus made a suggestion. “Maybe if 
	we pushed some glue under the door so 
	Ribsy would get his paws in it, and then 
	called to him so he would scratch at the 
	door, maybe his paws would stick to the 
	button in the knob and he could unlock it 
	himself.” Beezus thought her idea was a 
	good one until she saw the disgusted look 
	on Henry’s face. “I just thought it might 
	work,” she said apologetically. 
	“Mother—” began Ramona, leaning out 
	into the hall. 
	Mother paid no attention to her. “I just 
	don’t see what we can do—” 
	“Mother,” said Ramona urgently. This 
	time she stepped into the hall. 
	84 
	“Unless we get a ladder (Go back to your 
	room, Ramona) and break the window so 
	we can unlock it,” Mother continued, 
	speaking with one sentence inside another, 
	the way grown-ups so often did with 
	Ramona around. 
	“But Mother, ” insisted Ramona even 
	more urgently. “I have to—” 
	“Oh, dear, I might have known,” sighed 
	Mother. “Well, come on. I’ll take you next 
	door.” 
	Leave it to Ramona, thought Beezus, 
	embarrassed to have her little sister behave 
	this way in front of Henry. 
	“Don’t worry, Ribsy,” said Henry. “We’ll 
	get you out somehow.” He turned to Beezus 
	and said gloomily, “If we don’t get him out 
	by dinnertime, maybe we could cut some 
	meat up in real little pieces and shove it 
	under the door to him. I don’t see how we 
	could get a drink of water to him, though.” 
	85 
	“We have to get him out before then,” 
	said Beezus. “Father wouldn’t like it if he 
	came home and found Ribsy had locked 
	him out of the bathroom.” 
	“Ribsy couldn’t have locked the door if 
	Ramona hadn’t put him in the bathroom in 
	the first place,” Henry pointed out. “What a 
	dumb thing to do!” 
	Beezus had nothing to say to this. What 
	could she say when it really had been 
	Ramona’s fault? 
	Mother and Ramona soon returned. “I 
	think we’ll get Ribsy out now,” said Mother 
	cheerfully. “The lady next door says her little 
	grandson locks himself in the bathroom every 
	time he comes to visit her, and she always 
	unlocks the door with a nail file. She told me 
	how to do it.” Mother found a nail file, which 
	she inserted in the keyhole. She wiggled it 
	around, the doorknob clicked, and Mother 
	opened the door. It was as easy as that! 
	86 
	
	With a joyous bark Ribsy bounded out 
	and jumped up on Henry. “Good old 
	Ribsy,” said Henry. “Did you think we were 
	going to leave you in there?” Ribsy wriggled and wagged his tail happily because he 
	was free at last. 
	“Now maybe he’ll be a good dog,” said 
	Ramona sulkily. 
	“He is a good dog, aren’t you, Ribsy?” 
	Henry patted him. 
	“He is not a good dog,” contradicted 
	Ramona. “He took my cookie away from 
	me and gobbled it right up.” 
	“Oh,” said Henry uncomfortably. “I 
	didn’t know he ate your cookie.” 
	“Well, he did,” said Ramona,“and I made 
	him go in the bathroom until he could be a 
	good dog.” 
	From the way Henry looked at Ramona, 
	Beezus could tell he didn’t think much of 
	her reason for shutting Ribsy in the bathroom. 
	“Oh, Ramona.” Mother looked amused 
	and exasperated at the same time. “Just 
	because you were sent to your room is no 
	reason for you to try to punish Henry’s 
	dog.” 
	“It is, too,” said Ramona defiantly. “He 
	was bad.” 
	88 
	“Well, I guess I better be going,” said 
	Henry. “Come on, Ribsy.” 
	“Don’t go, Henry,” begged Beezus. 
	“Maybe we could go out on the porch or 
	someplace and play a game.” 
	“Some other time maybe,” answered 
	Henry. “I’ve got things to do.” 
	“All right,” agreed Beezus reluctantly. 
	Henry probably knew they wouldn’t be safe 
	from Ramona anywhere, the way she was 
	behaving today. 
	When Henry had gone, Ramona gave a 
	hop to make her rabbit ears flop. “Now we 
	can play tiddlywinks!” she announced, as if 
	she had been waiting for this moment all 
	afternoon. 
	“No, we can’t,” snapped Beezus, who 
	could not remember when she had been so 
	annoyed with Ramona. 
	“Yes, we can,” said Ramona. “Henry’s 
	gone now.” 
	89 
	“We can’t, because I won’t play. So there!” 
	answered Beezus. It wasn’t as though Henry 
	came over every day to play checkers. He 
	came only once in a while, and then they 
	couldn’t play because Ramona was so awful. 
	Just then the telephone rang and Mother 
	answered it. “Oh, hello, Beatrice,” Beezus 
	heard her say. “I was hoping you’d call.” 
	“Tiddlywinks, tiddlywinks, I want to play 
	tiddlywinks,” chanted Ramona, shaking her 
	head back and forth. 
	“Not after the way you spoiled our 
	checker game,” said Beezus.“I wouldn’t play 
	tiddlywinks with you for a million dollars.” 
	“Yes!” shouted Ramona. 
	“Children!” Mother put her hand over the 
	mouthpiece of the telephone.“I’m trying to 
	talk to your Aunt Beatrice.” 
	For a moment Beezus forgot her quarrel 
	with Ramona. “Is she coming over today?” 
	she asked eagerly. 
	90 
	“Not today.” Mother smiled at Beezus. 
	“But I’ll tell her you wish she’d come.” 
	“Tell her she hasn’t been here for two 
	whole weeks,” said Beezus. 
	“Tiddlywinks, tiddlywinks,” chanted 
	Ramona, more quietly this time. “We’re 
	going to play tiddlywinks.” 
	“We are not!” whispered Beezus furiously. And as she looked at Ramona a terrible thought came to her. Right that very 
	instant she was so exasperated with Ramona 
	that she did not like her at all. Not one little 
	bit. Crashing her tricycle into the checkerboard, throwing a tantrum, and shoving a 
	dog into the bathroom—how could one 
	four-year-old be such a pest all in one afternoon? And Ramona wasn’t one bit sorry 
	about it, either. She was glad she had driven 
	Henry home with her naughtiness. Just look 
	at her, thought Beezus. Cookie crumbs 
	sticking to the front of her overalls, her 
	91 
	
	hands and face dirty, and those silly paper 
	ears. She’s just awful, that’s what she is, perfectly awful—and she looks so cheerful. To 
	look at her you wouldn’t know she’d done a 
	thing. She’s spoiled my whole afternoon and 
	she’s happy. She even thinks she’ll get me to 
	play tiddlywinks with her. Well, I won’t. I 
	won’t, because I don’t like her one little bit! 
	To get away from Ramona, Beezus 
	stalked into the living room and threw herself into her father’s big chair. Not one little 
	bit, she thought fiercely. But as Beezus sat 
	listening to her mother chatting and laughing over the telephone, she began to feel 
	uncomfortable. She ought to like Ramona. 
	Sisters always liked each other. They were 
	supposed to. Like Mother and Aunt 
	Beatrice. But that was different, Beezus 
	thought quickly. Aunt Beatrice wasn’t like 
	Ramona. She was—well, she was Aunt 
	Beatrice, loving and understanding and full 
	of fun. Ramona was noisy and grubby and 
	exasperating. 
	I feel so mixed up, thought Beezus. 
	Sometimes I don’t like Ramona at all, and 
	I’m supposed to like her because she’s my 
	sister, and . . . Oh, dear, even if she’s little, 
	can’t she ever be more like other people’s 
	sisters? 
	93 
	4 
	Ramona and the Apples 
	“ Mother, I’m home,” Beezus called, as she 
	burst into the house one afternoon 
	after school. 
	Mother appeared, wearing her hat and 
	coat and carrying a shopping list in her 
	hand. She kissed Beezus. “How was school 
	today?” she asked. 
	“All right.We studied about Christopher 
	Columbus,” said Beezus. 
	94 
	“Did you, dear?” said Mother absentmindedly. “I wonder if you’d mind keeping 
	an eye on Ramona for half an hour or so 
	while I do the marketing. She was up so late 
	last night I let her have a long nap this afternoon, and I wasn’t able to go out until she 
	woke up.” 
	“All right, I’ll look after her,” agreed 
	Beezus. 
	“I told her she could have two marshmallows,” said Mother, as she left the house. 
	Ramona came out of the kitchen with 
	a marshmallow in each hand. Her nose 
	was covered with white powder. “What’s 
	Christopher Colummus?” she asked. 
	“Christopher Columbus,” Beezus corrected. “Come here, Ramona. Let me wipe 
	off your nose.” 
	“No,” said Ramona, backing away. “I just 
	powdered it.” Closing her eyes, Ramona 
	pounded one of the marshmallows against 
	95 
	her nose. Powdered sugar flew all over her 
	face. “These are my powder puffs,” she 
	explained. 
	Beezus started to tell Ramona not to be 
	silly, she’d get all sticky, but then decided it 
	would be useless. Ramona never minded 
	being sticky. Instead, she said, “Christopher 
	Columbus is the man who discovered 
	America. He was trying to prove that the 
	world is round.” 
	“Is it?” Ramona sounded puzzled. She 
	beat the other marshmallow against her chin. 
	“Why, Ramona, don’t you know the 
	world is round?” Beezus asked. 
	Ramona shook her head and powdered 
	her forehead with a marshmallow. 
	“Well, the world is round just like an 
	orange,” Beezus told her. “If you could start 
	out and travel in a perfectly straight line you 
	would come right back where you started 
	from.” 
	96 
	“I would?” Ramona looked as if she 
	didn’t understand this at all. She also looked 
	as if she didn’t care much, because she went 
	right on powdering her face with the 
	marshmallows. 
	Oh, well, thought Beezus, there’s no use 
	trying to explain it to her. She went into the 
	bedroom to change from her school clothes 
	into her play clothes. As usual, she found 
	Ramona’s doll, Bendix, lying on her bed, 
	and with a feeling of annoyance she tossed it 
	across the room to Ramona’s bed.When she 
	had changed her clothes she went into the 
	kitchen, ate some graham crackers and 
	peanut butter, and helped herself to two 
	marshmallows. If Ramona could have two, it 
	was only fair that she should have two also. 
	After eating the marshmallows and licking the powdered sugar from her fingers, 
	Beezus decided that reading about Big Steve 
	would be the easiest way to keep Ramona 
	97 
	from thinking up some mischief to get into 
	while Mother was away. “Come here, 
	Ramona,” she said as she went into the 
	living room. “I’ll read to you.” 
	There was no answer. Ramona was not 
	there. 
	That’s funny, thought Beezus, and went 
	into the bedroom. The room was empty. I 
	wonder where she can be, said Beezus to 
	herself. She looked in Mother and Father’s 
	room. No one was there. “Ramona!” she 
	called. No answer. “Ramona, where are 
	you?” Still no answer. 
	Beezus was worried. She did not think 
	Ramona had left the house, because she had 
	not heard any doors open and close. Still, 
	with Ramona you never knew. Maybe she 
	was hiding. Beezus looked under the beds. 
	No Ramona. She looked in the bedroom 
	closets, the hall closet, the linen closet, even 
	the broom closet. Still no Ramona. She ran 
	98 
	upstairs to the attic and looked behind the 
	trunks. 
	Then she ran downstairs to the basement. 
	“Ramona!” she called anxiously, as she 
	peered around in the dim light. The basement was an eerie place with its gray 
	cement walls and the grotesque white arms 
	of the furnace reaching out in all directions. 
	Except for a faint sound from the pilot light 
	everything was silent. Suddenly the furnace 
	lit itself with such a whoosh that Beezus, her 
	heart pounding, turned and ran upstairs. 
	Even though she knew it was only the furnace, she could not help being frightened. 
	The house seemed so empty when no one 
	answered her calls. 
	Uneasily Beezus sat down in the living 
	room to try to think while she listened to 
	the silence. She must not get panicky. 
	Ramona couldn’t be far away. And if she 
	didn’t turn up soon, she would telephone 
	99 
	the police, the way Mother did the time 
	Ramona got lost because she started out to 
	find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 
	Thinking of the rainbow reminded 
	Beezus of her attempt to explain to 
	Ramona that the world is round like an 
	orange. Ramona hadn’t looked as if she 
	understood, but sometimes it was hard to 
	tell about Ramona. Maybe she just understood the part about coming back where she 
	started from. If Ramona set out to walk to 
	the end of the rainbow, she could easily 
	decide to try walking around the world. 
	That was exactly what she must have done. 
	The idea frightened Beezus. How would 
	she ever find Ramona? And what would 
	Mother say when she came home and 
	found Ramona gone? To think of Ramona 
	walking in a straight line, hoping to go 
	straight around the world and come back 
	100 
	where she started from, trying to cross busy 
	streets alone, honked at by trucks, barked at 
	by strange dogs, tired, hungry. . . But I can’t 
	just sit here, thought Beezus. I’ve got to do 
	something. I’ll run out and look up and 
	down the street. She can’t have gone far. 
	At that moment Beezus heard a noise. 
	She thought it came from the basement, but 
	she was not certain. Tiptoeing to the coldair intake in the hall, she bent over and listened. Sure enough, a noise so faint she 
	could scarcely hear it came up through the 
	furnace pipe. So the house wasn’t empty 
	after all! Just wait until she got hold of 
	Ramona! 
	Beezus snapped on the basement light 
	and ran down the steps. “Ramona, come 
	out,” she ordered. “I know you’re here.” 
	The only answer was a chomping sound 
	from the corner of the basement. Beezus ran 
	around the furnace and there, in the dimly 
	101 
	lit corner, sat Ramona, eating an apple. 
	Beezus was so relieved to see Ramona 
	safe, and at the same time so angry with her 
	for hiding, that she couldn’t say anything. 
	She just stood there filled with the exasperated mixed-up feeling that Ramona so often 
	gave her. 
	“Hello,” said Ramona through a bite of 
	apple. 
	“Ramona Geraldine Quimby!” exclaimed 
	Beezus, when she had found her voice. 
	“What do you think you’re doing?” 
	“Playing hide-and-seek,” answered 
	Ramona. 
	“Well, I’m not!” snapped Beezus.“It takes 
	two to play hide-and-seek.” 
	“You found me,” Ramona pointed out. 
	“Oh . . .” Once again Beezus couldn’t find 
	any words. To think she had worried so, 
	when all the time Ramona was sitting in the 
	basement listening to her call. And eating an 
	apple, too! 
	102 
	As she stood in front of Ramona, 
	Beezus’s eyes began to grow accustomed to 
	the dim light and she realized what Ramona 
	was doing. She stared, horrified at what she 
	saw. As if hiding were not enough! What 
	would Mother say when she came home 
	and found what Ramona had been up to 
	this time? 
	Ramona was sitting on the floor beside a 
	box of apples. Lying around her on the 
	cement floor were a number of apples— 
	each with one bite out of it. While Beezus 
	stared, Ramona reached into the box, 
	selected an apple, took one big bite out of 
	the reddest part, and tossed the rest of the 
	apple onto the floor. While she noisily 
	chewed that bite, she reached into the apple 
	box again. 
	“Ramona!” cried Beezus, horrified. “You 
	can’t do that.” 
	“I can, too,” said Ramona through her 
	mouthful. 
	103 
	
	“Stop it,” ordered Beezus. “Stop it this 
	instant! You can’t eat one bite and then 
	throw the rest away.” 
	“But the first bite tastes best,” explained 
	Ramona reasonably, as she reached into the 
	box again. 
	Beezus had to admit that Ramona was 
	right. The first bite of an apple always did 
	104 
	taste best. Ramona’s sharp little teeth were 
	about to sink into another apple when 
	Beezus snatched it from her. 
	“That’s my apple,” screamed Ramona. 
	“It is not!” said Beezus angrily, stamping 
	her foot. “One apple is all you’re supposed 
	to have. Just wait till Mother finds out!” 
	Ramona stopped screaming and watched 
	Beezus.Then, seeing how angry Beezus was, 
	she smiled and offered her an apple. “I want 
	to share the apples,” she said sweetly. 
	“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Beezus. “And 
	don’t try to work that sharing business on 
	me!” That was one of the difficult things 
	about Ramona. When she had done something wrong, she often tried to get out of it 
	by offering to share something. She heard a 
	lot about sharing at nursery school. 
	Now what am I going to do, Beezus 
	wondered. I promised Mother I would keep 
	an eye on Ramona, and look what she’s 
	105 
	gone and done. How am I going to explain 
	this to Mother? I’ll get scolded too. And all 
	the apples.What can we do with them? 
	Beezus was sure about one thing. She no 
	longer felt mixed up about Ramona. 
	Ramona was perfectly impossible. She 
	snatched Ramona’s hand.“You come upstairs 
	with me and be good until Mother gets 
	back,” she ordered, pulling her sister up the 
	basement stairs. 
	Ramona broke away from her and ran 
	into the living room. She climbed onto a 
	chair, where she sat with her legs sticking 
	straight out in front of her. She folded her 
	hands in her lap and said in a little voice, 
	“Don’t bother me. This is my quiet time. 
	I’m supposed to be resting.” 
	Quiet times were something else Ramona 
	had learned about at nursery school. When 
	she didn’t want to do something, she often 
	insisted she was supposed to be having a 
	106 
	
	quiet time. Beezus was about to say that 
	Ramona didn’t need a quiet time, because 
	she hadn’t been playing hard and Mother 
	had said she had already had a nap, but then 
	she thought better of it. If Ramona wanted 
	to sit in a chair and be quiet, let her. She 
	might stay out of mischief until Mother 
	came home. 
	Beezus had no sooner sat down to work 
	on her pot holders, planning to keep an eye 
	on Ramona at the same time, when the 
	107 
	telephone rang. It must be Aunt Beatrice, 
	she thought, before she answered. Mother 
	and Aunt Beatrice almost always talked to 
	each other about this time of day. 
	“Hello, darling, how are you?” asked Aunt 
	Beatrice. 
	“Oh, Aunt Beatrice,” cried Beezus, 
	“Ramona has just done something awful, 
	and I was supposed to be looking after her. 
	I don’t know what to do.” She told about 
	Ramona’s hiding in the cellar and biting 
	into half a box of apples. 
	Aunt Beatrice laughed. “Leave it to 
	Ramona to think up something new,” she 
	said. “Do you know what I’d do if I were 
	you?” 
	“What?” asked Beezus eagerly, already 
	feeling better because she had confided her 
	troubles to her aunt. 
	“I wouldn’t say anything more about it,” 
	said Aunt Beatrice. “Lots of times little chil108 
	dren are naughty because they want to 
	attract attention. I have an idea that saying 
	nothing about her naughtiness will worry 
	Ramona more than a scolding.” 
	Beezus thought this over and decided 
	her aunt was right. If there was one thing 
	Ramona couldn’t stand, it was being ignored. 
	“I’ll try it,” she said. 
	“And about the apples,” Aunt Beatrice 
	went on. “All I can suggest is that your 
	mother might make applesauce.” 
	This struck Beezus as being funny, and as 
	she and her aunt laughed together over the 
	telephone she felt much better. 
	“Tell your mother I phoned,” said Aunt 
	Beatrice. 
	“I will,” promised Beezus. “And please 
	come over soon.” 
	When Beezus heard her mother drive up, 
	she rushed out to meet her and tell her the 
	story of what Ramona had done. She also 
	109 
	told her Aunt Beatrice’s suggestion. 
	“Oh, dear, leave it to Ramona,” sighed 
	Mother. “Your aunt is right. We won’t say a 
	word about it.” 
	Beezus helped her mother carry the groceries into the house. Ramona came into 
	the kitchen to see if there were any animal 
	crackers among the packages. She waited a 
	few minutes for her sister to tattle on her. 
	Then, when Beezus did not say anything, 
	she announced, “I was bad this afternoon.” 
	She sounded pleased with herself. 
	“Were you?” remarked Mother calmly. 
	“Beezus, I think applesauce would be good 
	for dessert tonight. Will you run down and 
	bring up some apples?” 
	When Ramona looked disappointed at 
	having failed to arouse any interest, Beezus 
	and her mother exchanged smiles.“I want to 
	help,” said Ramona, rather than be left out. 
	Beezus and Ramona made four trips to 
	110 
	the basement to bring up all the bitten 
	apples. Mother said nothing about their 
	appearance, but spent the rest of the afternoon peeling and cooking apples. After she 
	had finished, she filled her two largest 
	mixing bowls, a casserole, and the bowl of 
	her electric mixer with applesauce. It took 
	her quite a while to rearrange the contents 
	of the refrigerator to make room for all the 
	applesauce. 
	When Beezus saw her father coming 
	home she ran out on the front walk to tell 
	him what had happened. He, too, agreed that 
	Aunt Beatrice’s suggestion was a good one. 
	“Daddy!” shrieked Ramona when her 
	father came in. 
	“How’s my girl?” asked Father as he 
	picked Ramona up and kissed her. 
	“Oh, I was bad today,” said Ramona. 
	“Were you?” said Father as he put her 
	down. “Was there any mail today?” 
	111 
	
	Ramona looked crestfallen. “I was very 
	bad,” she persisted. “I was awful.” 
	Father sat down and picked up the 
	evening paper. 
	“I hid from Beezus and I bit lots and lots 
	of apples,” Ramona went on insistently. 
	112 
	“Mmm,” remarked Father from behind 
	the paper. “I see they’re going to raise bus 
	fares again.” 
	“Lots and lots of apples,” repeated 
	Ramona in a loud voice. 
	“They raised bus fares last year,” Father 
	went on, winking at Beezus from behind 
	the paper. “The public isn’t going to stand 
	for this.” 
	Ramona looked puzzled and then disappointed, but she did not say anything. 
	Father dropped his paper. “Something 
	certainly smells good,” he said.“It smells like 
	applesauce. I hope so. There’s nothing I like 
	better than a big dish of applesauce for 
	dessert.” 
	Because Mother had been so busy making 
	applesauce, dinner was a little late that night. 
	At the table Ramona was unusually well 
	behaved. She did not interrupt and she did 
	not try to share her carrots, the way she 
	113 
	usually did because she did not like carrots. 
	As Beezus cleared the table and Mother 
	served dessert—which was fig Newtons and, 
	of course, applesauce—Ramona’s good 
	behavior continued. Beezus found she was 
	not very hungry for applesauce, but the rest of 
	the family appeared to enjoy it. After Beezus 
	had wiped the dishes for Mother she sat down 
	to embroider her pot holders. She had 
	decided to give Aunt Beatrice the pot holder 
	with the dancing knife and fork on it instead 
	of the one with the laughing teakettle. 
	Ramona approached her with Big Steve 
	the Steam Shovel in her hand. “Beezus, will 
	you read to me?” she asked. 
	She thinks I’ll say no and then she can 
	make a fuss, thought Beezus. Well, I won’t 
	give her a chance. “All right,” she said, putting down her pot holder and taking the 
	book, while Ramona climbed into the chair 
	beside her. 
	114 
	
	“Big Steve was a steam shovel. He was 
	the biggest steam shovel in the whole city,” 
	Beezus read. “ ‘Gr-r-r,’ growled Big Steve 
	when he moved the earth to make way for 
	the new highway.” 
	Father dropped his newspaper and 
	looked at his two daughters sitting side by 
	side. “I wonder,” he said, “exactly how long 
	this is going to last.” 
	“Just enjoy it while it does,” said Mother, 
	who was basting patches on the knees of a 
	pair of Ramona’s overalls. 
	“Gr-r-r,” growled Ramona. “Gr-r-r.” 
	Beezus also wondered just how long this 
	would go on. She didn’t enjoy growling like 
	a steam shovel and she felt that perhaps 
	Ramona was getting her own way after all. 
	I’m trying to like her like I’m supposed to, 
	anyhow, Beezus thought, and I do like her 
	more than I did this afternoon when I 
	found her in the basement. But what on 
	earth will Mother ever do with all that 
	applesauce? 
	116 
	5 
	A Party at 
	the Quimbys’ 
	Saturday morning turned out to be 
	cold and rainy. Beezus wiped the 
	breakfast dishes for her mother and listened 
	to Ramona, who was riding her tricycle 
	around the house, singing,“Copycat, cappycot, copycat, cappycot,” over and over at the 
	top of her voice, because she liked the sound 
	of the words. 
	Beezus and her mother finished the 
	117 
	dishes and went into the bedroom to put 
	clean sheets on the beds. “Copycat, cappycot,” droned Ramona’s singsong. 
	“Ramona, why don’t you sing something 
	else?” Mother asked at last. “We’ve been listening to that for a long time.” 
	“O.K.,” agreed Ramona. “I’m going to 
	have a par-tee,” she sang.“I’m going to have 
	a par-tee.” 
	“Thank you, Ramona. That’s better.” 
	Mother held one end of a pillow under her 
	chin while she slipped the other end into a 
	fresh case.“You know, that reminds me,” she 
	said to Beezus. “What would you like to do 
	to celebrate your birthday next week?” 
	Beezus thought a minute.“Well . . . I’d like 
	to have Aunt Beatrice over for dinner. She 
	hasn’t been here for such a long time. And 
	I’d like to have a birthday cake with pink 
	frosting.” Beezus smoothed a fresh sheet over 
	the bed. She almost enjoyed helping Mother 
	118 
	when they could talk without Ramona’s 
	interrupting all the time. The rain beating on 
	the windows and Ramona’s happy singsong 
	made the day seem cozy and peaceful. 
	“All right, that’s exactly what we’ll do.” 
	Mother seemed really pleased with Beezus’s 
	suggestions. “It’s a long time since we’ve 
	seen Aunt Beatrice, but of course teachers 
	always have a lot to do when school starts.” 
	Beezus noticed that Mother gave a little sigh 
	as she smoothed her side of the sheet.“She’ll 
	probably have more time now that the 
	semester has started and it really isn’t long 
	before Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations.We’ll see a lot of her then.” 
	Why, Mother misses Aunt Beatrice too, 
	thought Beezus. I believe she misses her as 
	much as I do, even though she never says so. 
	Leaving Beezus with the new and surprising thought that grown-ups sometimes 
	missed each other, Mother gathered up the 
	119 
	sheets and pillowcases that had been 
	removed from the beds and carried them to 
	the basement.While she was downstairs the 
	telephone rang. “Answer it, will you, 
	Beezus,” Mother called. 
	When Beezus picked up the telephone, a 
	hurried voice said, “This is Mrs. Kemp. Do 
	you mind if I leave Willa Jean when I bring 
	Howie over this afternoon?” 
	“Just a minute. I’ll ask Mother.” Beezus 
	called down the basement stairs, repeating 
	the question. 
	“Why, no, I guess not,” Mother replied. 
	“Mother says it’s all right,” Beezus said 
	into the telephone. 
	“Thank you,” said Mrs. Kemp. “Now I’ll 
	(Howie, stop banging!) have a chance to do 
	some shopping.” 
	Well, thought Beezus when she had hung 
	up, things won’t be quiet around here much 
	longer. Howie, who was in Ramona’s class at 
	120 
	nursery school, was the noisiest little boy she 
	knew, and he and Ramona often quarreled. 
	Willa Jean was at the awkward age—too big 
	to be a baby and not big enough to be out 
	of diapers. 
	“You know,” said Mother, when she came 
	up from the basement, “I don’t remember 
	telling Mrs. Kemp that Howie could come 
	over this afternoon, but maybe I did. I’ve 
	had so much on my mind lately, trying to 
	get the nursery-school rummage sale organized.” 
	After an early lunch Mother decided 
	there would be enough time to wash everybody’s hair before Howie and Willa Jean 
	arrived. She put on her oldest dress, because 
	Ramona always squirmed and got soap all 
	over her. Then she stood Ramona on a 
	chair, made her lean over the kitchen sink, 
	and went to work. Ramona howled, as she 
	always did when her hair was washed.When 
	121 
	Mother finished she rubbed Ramona’s hair 
	with a bath towel, turned up the furnace 
	thermostat so the house would be extrawarm, and gave Ramona two graham crackers to make up for the indignity of having 
	her hair washed. 
	Then Beezus stepped onto the stool and 
	bent over the sink for her turn. After 
	Mother had washed her own hair and 
	before she went into the bathroom to put it 
	up in pin curls, she said to Beezus, “Would 
	you mind getting out the vacuum cleaner 
	and picking up those graham-cracker 
	crumbs Ramona spilled on the rug?” 
	Beezus did not mind. She rather liked 
	running the vacuum cleaner if her mother 
	didn’t make a regular chore of it. 
	“I’m going to have a par-tee,” sang 
	Ramona above the roar of the vacuum 
	cleaner. Then she changed her song. “Here 
	comes my par-tee!” she chanted. 
	122 
	Beezus glanced out the window and 
	quickly switched off the vacuum cleaner. 
	Four small children were coming up the 
	front walk through the rain. A car stopped 
	in front of the house and three children 
	climbed out. Two more were splashing 
	across the street. 
	“Mother!” cried Beezus. “Come here, 
	quick. Ramona wasn’t pretending!” 
	Mother appeared in the living room just 
	as the doorbell rang. One side of her hair 
	was up in pin curls and the other side hung 
	wet and dripping on the towel around her 
	neck. “Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed 
	when she understood the situation. “That 
	explains Mrs. Kemp’s phone call. Ramona, 
	how could you?” 
	“I wanted to have a party,” explained 
	Ramona. “I invited everybody yesterday.” 
	The doorbell rang again, this time long 
	and hard. There was the sound of many 
	123 
	rubber boots jumping up and down on the 
	porch. 
	“Mother, we just can’t have a party with 
	our hair wet,” wailed Beezus. 
	“What else can we do?” Mother sounded 
	desperate. “They’re here and we can’t very 
	well send them home. Their mothers have 
	probably planned to shop or something 
	while we look after them.” 
	Ramona struggled with the doorknob 
	and managed to open the heavy front door. 
	Mrs. Kemp stopped her car in front of the 
	Quimbys’, and Howie and Willa Jean 
	hopped out. “I’ll pick them up at four,” she 
	called gaily.“I’m so glad to have a chance to 
	get out and do some shopping.” 
	Mother smiled weakly and looked at all 
	the children on the porch. 
	“Where do you suppose she found them 
	all?” whispered Beezus. “I don’t even know 
	some of them.” 
	124 
	“All right, children.” Mother spoke 
	firmly. “Leave your wet boots and raincoats 
	on the porch.” 
	“I’ve got a par-tee,” sang Ramona happily. 
	Beezus, who had plenty of experience 
	with Ramona and her boots, knew where 
	she was needed. She started pulling off 
	boots and unbuttoning raincoats. 
	“What on earth shall we do with them 
	on a day like this?” whispered Mother. 
	Beezus grabbed a muddy boot. “Hold 
	still,” she said firmly to its owner. “They’ll 
	expect refreshments,” she said. 
	“I know,” sighed Mother. “You’ll have to 
	put on your coat and run down to the 
	market— Oh, no, you can’t go out in this 
	rain with your hair wet.” Mother tugged at 
	another boot. “I’ll have to see what I can 
	find in the kitchen.” 
	Beezus and her mother herded the wiggling, squealing crowd into the front bedroom 
	125 
	and went to work removing sweaters, jackets, 
	caps, and mittens. In between Beezus pulled 
	three children out of the closet, dragged one 
	out from under the bed, and snatched her 
	mother’s bottle of best perfume from another. 
	“All right, everybody out of here,” 
	Beezus ordered, when the last mitten was 
	removed and her mother had hurried into 
	the kitchen. “We’ll go into the living room 
	and . . . and do something,” she finished 
	lamely. “Ramona, bring some of your toys 
	out of your room.” 
	“Bingle-bongle-by!” shouted Howie, just 
	to make some noise. 
	“Bingle-bongle-by!” The others joined 
	in with great delight. It was such a nice 
	noisy thing to yell.“Bingle-bongle-by,” they 
	screamed at the tops of their voices as they 
	scampered into the living room. “Binglebongle-by.” 
	Howie grabbed the vacuum cleaner, 
	turned on the switch, and charged across the 
	126 
	room. “I’ll suck you up!” he shouted. “I’ll 
	suck everybody up in the vacuum cleaner!” 
	“Bingle-bongle-by!” shouted the others 
	above the roar of the vacuum cleaner. 
	One little girl began to cry. “I don’t want 
	to be sucked up in the vacuum cleaner,” she 
	sobbed.Willa Jean, looking bulgy because of 
	the diapers and plastic pants under her overalls, clung to a chair and wept. 
	Ramona appeared with her arms full of 
	toys, but no one paid any attention to them. 
	The vacuum cleaner was much more fun. 
	“I want to push the vacuum cleaner,” 
	screamed Susan, who lived in the next 
	block. 
	Ramona offered Susan her panda bear, 
	but Susan did not want it. Ramona hit 
	Susan with the panda. “You take my bear,” 
	she ordered. “This is my party and you’re 
	supposed to do what I say.” 
	“I don’t want your old bear,” answered 
	Susan. 
	127 
	
	Beezus tried to grab the vacuum cleaner, 
	but Howie was too quick for her.The room 
	was getting uncomfortably hot, so Beezus 
	darted to the thermostat to turn down the 
	heat. Then she dashed to the other side of 
	the room and disconnected the vacuum 
	cleaner at the wall. It died with a noisy 
	groan. Suddenly everyone was quiet, waiting 
	to see what would happen. 
	128 
	“Hey,” protested Howie, “you can’t do 
	that.” 
	Beezus frantically tried to think of some 
	way to keep fifteen small children busy and 
	out of mischief. At least, she thought there 
	were fifteen. They didn’t stand still long 
	enough to be counted. 
	“Where’s the party?” one little boy asked. 
	Ramona appeared with more toys, which 
	she dumped on the floor. This time she 
	brought a drum. Howie quickly lost interest 
	in the vacuum cleaner and grabbed the 
	drum. Beezus seized the vacuum cleaner 
	and shoved it into the hall closet, while 
	Howie began to beat the drum.“I’m leading 
	a parade,” he said. 
	“You are not,” contradicted Ramona. 
	“This is my party.” 
	Susan snatched a pink plastic horn and 
	tooted it. “I’m in the parade too,” she said. 
	“I want to be in the parade! I want to be 
	129 
	in the parade!” cried the others. 
	That was it! They could play parade! 
	Beezus ran to the bedroom and found a 
	whistle and a couple of horns left over from 
	a Halloween party. What else could be used 
	in a parade? Flags, of course! But what could 
	she use for flags? Beezus thought fast. She 
	gathered up two yardsticks and several rulers; 
	then she ran to the front bedroom and 
	snatched some of her father’s handkerchiefs 
	from a drawer. She had to move fast before 
	the children grew tired of the idea. 
	“I want to be in the parade!” screamed 
	the children. 
	“Mother, help me,” cried Beezus. 
	Somehow Beezus and her mother got 
	Father’s handkerchiefs tied to the sticks and 
	distributed to the children who did not have 
	noisemakers. 
	Howie banged the drum. “Follow me,” 
	he ordered, beginning to march.The others 
	130 
	followed, blowing whistles, tooting horns, 
	waving flags. 
	“No!” screamed Ramona, who wanted 
	to boss her own party. 
	“You wanted a party,” Mother reminded 
	her. “If your guests want to play parade, 
	you’d better join them.” 
	Ramona scowled, but she took a flag and 
	joined the parade rather than be left out 
	entirely at her own party. 
	“Playing parade was a wonderful idea.” 
	Mother smiled at Beezus. “I hope it lasts.” 
	“So do I,” Beezus agreed. 
	“Bingle-bongle-by,” yelled the flag 
	wavers. 
	Howie led the parade, including a sulky 
	Ramona, out of the living room, down the 
	hall, through the kitchen and dining room, 
	and back into the living room again. Willa 
	Jean toddled along at the end of the procession. Beezus was afraid the parade might 
	131 

	break up, but all the children appeared 
	delighted with the game. Into the bedroom 
	they marched and out again. Beezus opened 
	the basement door. Down the steps Howie 
	led the parade. Willa Jean had to go down 
	the steps backwards on her hands and knees. 
	Three times around the furnace marched 
	the parade and up the steps again before 
	Willa Jean was halfway down. 
	Beezus opened the door to the attic. Up 
	the steps marched the parade. Stamp, stamp, 
	stamp went their feet overhead. Stamp, 
	stamp, stamp. 
	Beezus remembered something Ramona 
	had enjoyed when she was still in diapers. 
	She lugged Willa Jean up the basement 
	steps, sat her in the middle of the kitchen 
	floor, and handed her the egg beater. 
	“There. Don’t step on her,” she said to her 
	mother. 
	“Thank goodness,” sighed Mother. 
	“Maybe they’ll play parade long enough for 
	us to fix something for them to eat.” 
	“What’ll we give them?” Beezus asked. 
	Mother laughed. “This is a wonderful 
	chance to get rid of all that applesauce. Let’s 
	hurry and get it ready before they get tired 
	of their game. Get the colored paper napkins 
	out of the cupboard and—oh, dear, what 
	shall we do for chairs?” 
	“They can sit on the floor,” suggested 
	134 
	Beezus, looking through the cupboard for 
	napkins. 
	“I guess they’ll have to.” Mother took the 
	applesauce out of the refrigerator.“If we put 
	a couple of sheets down for them to sit on, 
	maybe they won’t get applesauce on the 
	rug.” 
	The parade tramped down the attic stairs 
	and through the kitchen.“But Mother,” said 
	Beezus, when the drum and horns had disappeared into the basement again, “the only 
	napkins I can find are for St.Valentine’s Day 
	and Halloween.They won’t do.” 
	“They’ll have to do,” said Mother. 
	Beezus spread two sheets in the middle of 
	the living-room floor. Then she went into 
	the kitchen to help Mother, who was tearing open three boxes of fig Newtons. “It’s a 
	good thing I bought these at that sale last 
	week,” she remarked. 
	“Are we going to give them lemonade or 
	135 
	anything to drink?” Beezus asked. 
	“Not on my living-room rug.” Mother 
	rapidly spooned applesauce into dishes. 
	“Applesauce and fig Newtons are bad 
	enough.” 
	“Maybe if we feed them right away some 
	of them will think the party is over and go 
	home.” Beezus piled fig Newtons on two 
	plates. 
	“I hope so. This many small children in 
	the house on a rainy day is too much.” The 
	parade stamped across the attic floor again, 
	and Mother had to raise her voice to make 
	herself heard. “It sounds as if they were 
	coming through the ceiling.” 
	“Let’s catch them the next time they 
	come through the kitchen and hand out the 
	applesauce,” Beezus shouted back. “Then 
	maybe we can get them to march into the 
	living room.” 
	It was not long before Howie led the 
	136 
	parade into the kitchen again. He stopped so 
	suddenly that the children bumped into one 
	another. “When do we eat?” he demanded. 
	“Now.” Beezus thrust a dish of applesauce and a spoon into his hands. 
	“I want some,” cried the others. 
	Mother handed a second child some 
	applesauce. “Forward march!” she ordered. 
	Beezus led Howie into the living room, 
	and the rest of the parade followed with 
	their applesauce. “You sit there,” she said to 
	Howie, pointing to a place on the sheet. She 
	was relieved to see the others seat themselves around the edge of the sheet. Quickly 
	she handed around paper napkins. 
	“I want one with witches on it,” 
	demanded a boy who had a Valentine napkin. 
	“I want one with hearts on it,” wailed a 
	girl who had a Halloween napkin. 
	Beezus hastily counted the napkins. Yes, 
	there were enough of each kind to go 
	137 
	around. Two napkins apiece would be safer 
	anyway. She handed each child a second 
	napkin and they all began to eat their applesauce, except one little girl who didn’t like 
	applesauce. Ramona was beaming, because 
	refreshments were the most important part 
	of any party and now at last her guests were 
	behaving the way she wanted them to. 
	Mother came out of the kitchen with the 
	plates of fig Newtons, which she handed to 
	Beezus. “Here, pass these around,” she said. 
	“I think I’d better help Willa Jean.” Willa 
	Jean knew how to eat with a spoon. The 
	trouble was, she had to pick up the food 
	with her left hand and put it into the spoon, 
	which she held in her right hand. Then, 
	most of the time, she was able to get it into 
	her mouth. 
	Ramona, her face shining with happiness, looked at her friends sharing the applesauce.“Those cookies are filled with worms. 
	138 
	Chopped-up worms!” she gleefully told 
	everyone. 
	“Why, Ramona!” Beezus was shocked. 
	“They aren’t either. They’re filled with 
	ground-up figs.You know that.” 
	Ramona did not answer. Her mouth was 
	full of fig Newtons. 
	Beezus passed the plate to a boy named 
	Joey. “I don’t like worms,” he said. 
	“I don’t like worms,” said the next little 
	girl, who had applesauce all over her chin. 
	Beezus noticed that Ramona was beginning to scowl. When Howie refused a 
	cookie, it was too much for Ramona. “You 
	eat that!” she shouted. 
	“I won’t,” yelled Howie.“You can’t make 
	me.” 
	Ramona jumped up, spilling her applesauce on the sheet. She thrust a nibbled 
	fig Newton at Howie. “You eat that,” she 
	repeated as she stepped into the applesauce. 
	139 
	
	“It’s my party and I want you to eat it!” 
	Howie knocked the cookie out of her 
	hand. Ramona grabbed a handful of fig 
	Newtons and thrust them at Susan. “Eat 
	these,” she shouted. 
	Susan began to cry. “They’re full of 
	140 
	worms,” she sobbed. “I don’t like worms.” 
	“They’re pretend worms,” yelled Ramona. 
	“No, they’re not,” cried Susan. “They’re 
	real!” 
	“You eat these,” Ramona yelled, thrusting 
	her handful of cookies at the children, who 
	backed away. Ramona stamped her feet and 
	screamed. Then she threw the fig Newtons 
	at her guests as hard as she could. 
	“My mother won’t let me eat worms!” 
	shouted a little boy. 
	Ramona threw herself on the floor and 
	kicked. 
	“Ramona, stop that!” Mother appeared 
	from the kitchen with Willa Jean balanced 
	on one hip. She grabbed Ramona by one 
	arm and tried to drag her to her feet, but 
	Ramona’s legs were like rubber. 
	“All right, Howie, forward march!” 
	Beezus ordered, hoping to draw attention 
	from Ramona. No one moved. It was much 
	141 
	more fun to see what was going to happen 
	to Ramona. 
	“This is my party! They’re supposed to 
	eat the refreshments!” Ramona howled, 
	banging her heels on the floor. 
	“Ramona, you’re acting like a two-yearold. You may go to your room and close the 
	door until you can behave yourself,” said 
	Mother quietly. 
	Ramona kicked harder to show that she 
	was not going to mind unless she felt like it. 
	“Ramona,” said Mother even more quietly. “Don’t make me count to ten.” 
	Gasping with sobs, Ramona got up from 
	the floor and ran into the bedroom, where 
	she slammed the door as hard as she could. 
	“All right, parade,” said Mother wearily. 
	“Forward march.” 
	Up and down, whistling, banging, tooting, 
	marched the parade. Mother sat Willa Jean 
	down and was just beginning to gather up the 
	142 
	dishes and sheets when a car stopped in front 
	of the house and Mrs. Kemp got out.“At last,” 
	sighed Mother, hurrying to the door. 
	“I’ve come for Howie and Willa Jean,” 
	said Mrs. Kemp, as several other cars stopped 
	in front of the Quimbys’. The parade 
	marched into the living room. 
	“I don’t want to go home,” protested 
	Howie, when he saw his mother. 
	“The party must have been a success,” 
	Mrs. Kemp observed. 
	“It certainly was.” Mother tried to push 
	the uncurled side of her hair behind her ear 
	and to smooth out her rumpled old dress. 
	“I like to play parade,” said Howie,“but I 
	didn’t like what they had to eat.” 
	“Why, Howie,” scolded Mrs. Kemp. “We 
	must remember our manners.” 
	Ramona, her face streaked with tears, 
	came out of her room and stood staring 
	unhappily at her departing guests.When the 
	143 
	last child had struggled into his boots, she 
	looked tearfully at her mother. “I’m behaving myself now,” she said meekly. 
	Mother dropped wearily into a chair. 
	“Ramona, if you wanted a party, why didn’t 
	you ask me to have one?” 
	“Because when I ask you don’t let me do 
	things,” explained Ramona, sniffing. 
	Beezus couldn’t help feeling there was 
	some truth in Ramona’s remark. She had 
	often felt that way herself, especially when 
	she was younger. “Mother, did I do things 
	like Ramona when I was four?” she asked. 
	“You did some of the things Ramona 
	does now,” said Mother thoughtfully, “but 
	you were really very different. You were 
	quieter, for one thing.” 
	This pleased Beezus. One of the reasons 
	she sometimes disliked Ramona was that 
	she was never quiet when she could manage 
	to be noisy. 
	144 
	“Of course there are some things that all 
	four-year-olds do,” Mother continued, “but 
	even sisters are usually different. Just the way 
	your Aunt Beatrice and I were different 
	when we were girls. I was a bookworm and 
	went to the library two or three times a 
	week. She was the best hopscotch player and 
	the fastest rope jumper in the neighborhood. And she was better at jacks than 
	anybody in our whole school.” 
	This surprised Beezus. She had never 
	thought about her mother and aunt as children before. She tried to picture her schoolteacher aunt jumping rope and found to her 
	surprise that it was not very hard to do. Of 
	course Mother and Aunt Beatrice must have 
	been different when they were girls, because 
	they were so different now that they were 
	grown up. And she was glad they were 
	different. She loved them both. 
	“Did I have tantrums, too?” Beezus asked. 
	145 
	“Once in a while,” said Mother.“I always 
	dreaded cutting your fingernails, because 
	you kicked and screamed.” 
	Beezus could not help feeling silly. 
	Imagine having a tantrum over a little thing 
	like having her fingernails cut! 
	Then Ramona spoke up. “I don’t cry 
	when you cut my fingernails,” she boasted. 
	“Yes, but you scream when you have 
	your hair washed,” Beezus could not help 
	reminding her. 
	“Ramona,” said Mother, “you were a 
	very naughty girl this afternoon. What are 
	we going to do with you?” 
	Ramona stopped sniffing and looked 
	interested.“Lock me in a closet for a million 
	years?” she suggested cheerfully. 
	Mother and Beezus exchanged glances. 
	How quickly Ramona recovered! 
	“Make me sleep outdoors in the rain?” 
	Obviously Ramona was enjoying herself. 
	146 
	“Not let me have anything to eat but carrots?” 
	Mother laughed and looked at Beezus. 
	“I’m afraid all we can do is wait for her to 
	grow up,” she said. 
	And when Mother said we like that, 
	Beezus almost felt sorry for Ramona, 
	because she would have to wait such a long 
	time to be grown up. 
	147 
	6 
	Beezus’s Birthday 
	When Beezus came home from 
	school on the afternoon of her 
	tenth birthday, she felt that so far the day had 
	been perfect—packages by her plate at 
	breakfast, a new dress to wear to school, the 
	whole class singing “Happy Birthday” just 
	for her. But the best part was still to come. 
	Aunt Beatrice was coming for dinner. 
	Beezus could hardly wait to tell her aunt 
	148 
	about acting the part of Sacajawea leading 
	Lewis and Clark across the plains to Oregon 
	at a P.T.A. meeting. And of course Aunt 
	Beatrice would bring more presents—very 
	special presents, because she was Aunt 
	Beatrice’s namesake. And at dinner there 
	would be a beautiful birthday cake with ten 
	candles. Mother had probably worked all 
	afternoon baking and decorating the cake 
	and now had it hidden away in a cupboard. 
	When Mother kissed Beezus she had 
	said, “I’m sorry, Beezus, but I’ll have to ask 
	you to keep Ramona out of the kitchen for 
	a while.” 
	“Why?” asked Beezus, thinking her 
	mother was planning a surprise. 
	“So I can bake your birthday cake,” 
	Mother explained. 
	“Isn’t it baked yet?” exclaimed Beezus. 
	“Oh, Mother.” 
	“This has been one of those days when I 
	149 
	couldn’t seem to get anything done,” said 
	Mother.“It was my morning for the nurseryschool car pool. After I picked up all the 
	children and drove them to nursery school 
	and came home and did the breakfast dishes 
	and made the beds, it was time to pick up 
	the children and take them all home again. 
	And after lunch I started the cake and had 
	just creamed the sugar and butter in the 
	electric mixer when I was called to the telephone. When I came back, what do you 
	think had happened?” 
	“What?” asked Beezus, pretty sure 
	Ramona had something to do with it. 
	“Ramona had dropped all the eggs in the 
	house into the batter and had started the 
	mixer,” said Mother. 
	“Shells and all?” asked Beezus, horrified. 
	“Shells and all,” repeated Mother wearily. 
	“And so I had to get out the car again and 
	drive to the market and buy more eggs.” 
	150 
	
	“Ramona, what did you have to go and 
	do a thing like that for?” Beezus demanded 
	of her little sister, who was playing with her 
	doll Bendix. 
	“To see what would happen,” answered 
	Ramona. 
	She doesn’t look a bit sorry, thought 
	Beezus crossly. Spoiling my birthday cake 
	like that! 
	“Don’t worry, dear. There’s still plenty of 
	151 
	time to bake another,” said Mother.“If you’ll 
	just keep Ramona out of the kitchen, I can 
	get it into the oven in no time at all.” 
	That made Beezus feel better. At least she 
	would have a birthday cake, even if it did 
	mean looking after Ramona for a while. 
	“Read to me,” Ramona demanded. 
	“Read about Big Steve.” 
	“I’ll read to you, but I won’t read that 
	book,” said Beezus, going to the bookcase. 
	She really wanted to read one of her birthday books, called 202 Things to Do on a 
	Rainy Afternoon, but she knew Ramona 
	would insist on a story. “How about Hänsel 
	and Gretel?” she asked. Next to stories with 
	lots of noise, Ramona liked stories about 
	witches, goblins, or ogres. 
	“Yes, I like Hänsel and Gretel,” agreed 
	Ramona, as she climbed on the davenport 
	and sat Bendix beside her. “O.K., I’m ready. 
	Now you can begin.” 
	152 
	Beezus curled up at the other end of the 
	davenport with Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “Once 
	upon a time . . .” she began, and Ramona listened contentedly.When she did not have to 
	make noises like machinery Beezus enjoyed 
	reading to Ramona, and this afternoon 
	reading aloud was particularly pleasant, with 
	Mother in the kitchen baking a birthday 
	cake. As Beezus read she listened to the whir 
	of the mixer and the sound of eggs being 
	cracked against a bowl. 
	Beezus read about Hänsel’s leaving a trail 
	of crumbs behind him as he and Gretel 
	went into the woods. She read the part 
	Ramona liked best, about the witch’s trying 
	to fatten Hänsel. Ramona listened wideeyed until Beezus came to the end of the 
	story, where Gretel pushed the witch into 
	the oven and escaped through the woods 
	with her brother. 
	“That’s a good story,” said Ramona, as she 
	153 
	jumped down from the davenport. 
	Surprised that Ramona didn’t demand 
	another story, Beezus picked up 202 Things 
	to Do on a Rainy Afternoon and began to read. 
	She was learning how to make a necklace 
	out of beans and pumpkin seeds painted 
	with fingernail polish when a lovely sweet 
	vanilla fragrance began to fill the house, and 
	Beezus knew her birthday cake was safely in 
	the oven at last. 
	Ramona’s unusual silence made Beezus 
	glance up from her book. “Ramona!” she 
	cried, when she saw what her little sister was 
	doing. “Stop that right away!” 
	Ramona was busy pulling grahamcracker crumbs out of the pocket of her 
	overalls and sprinkling them across the rug. 
	“I’m Hänsel leaving a trail of crumbs 
	through the woods,” she said, digging more 
	crumbs out of her pocket. “My father is a 
	poor woodcutter.” 
	154 
	“Oh, Ramona,” said Beezus, but she had 
	to giggle at the picture of Father as a poor 
	woodcutter. 
	Ramona sprinkled more crumbs on the 
	rug, and Beezus knew she had to do something about it. “Why don’t you pretend 
	you’re Gretel?” she suggested, because 
	Gretel would not leave crumbs on the rug. 
	“O.K.,” agreed Ramona. 
	That was easy, thought Beezus, and went 
	on reading about making a complete set of 
	doll furniture out of old milk cartons. How 
	good her birthday cake smelled! She hoped 
	Mother would remember she had asked for 
	pink frosting. She heard the oven door open 
	and close. Mother must be peeking into the 
	oven to see how my cake is coming along, 
	she thought. 
	Beezus read on, absorbed in the directions for making a vase out of an old 
	tomato-juice can. Something smells funny, 
	155 
	she thought as she turned a page. Then she 
	stopped and sniffed. The air was no longer 
	filled with the lovely warm fragrance of a 
	baking cake. It was filled with a horrid rubbery smell. That’s funny, thought Beezus. I 
	wonder what it can be. She sniffed again. 
	Maybe somebody was burning trash outside 
	and the smell was coming in through the 
	window. 
	Mother came into the living room from 
	the bedroom. “Beezus, do you smell something rubbery?” she asked anxiously. 
	“Yes, and it smells awful,” said Beezus. 
	Ramona held her nose. 
	Mother sniffed again. “It smells as if 
	something is scorching, too.” 
	Beezus went into the kitchen, where she 
	found the smell so strong that it made her 
	cough.“It’s worse in here, Mother,” she called, 
	as she looked to see if anything was burning 
	on the stove. Then Beezus remembered the 
	156 
	oven. “Mother,” she said in a worried voice, 
	“you don’t suppose something has happened 
	to my birthday cake again?” 
	“Of course not,” said Mother, coming 
	into the kitchen and opening the window. 
	“What could happen to it?” 
	Just to be sure, Beezus cautiously opened 
	the oven door. “Mother!” she cried, horrified at what she saw. “Look!” Ramona’s 
	rubber doll, Bendix, leaned over the edge of 
	the cake pan, her head and arms buried in 
	the batter. Her dress was scorched to a 
	golden tan.“Oh, Mother!” repeated Beezus. 
	Her birthday cake, her beautiful, fragrant 
	birthday cake, was ruined. 
	“Is the witch done yet?” Ramona asked. 
	“Ramona—” began Mother and stopped. 
	She couldn’t think of anything to say. 
	Silently she turned off the oven and, with a 
	pot holder, pulled out the doll and the 
	remains of the cake. 
	157 

	“Ramona Geraldine Quimby!” said 
	Beezus angrily. “You’re just awful, that’s 
	what you are! Just plain awful. Spoiling your 
	own sister’s birthday cake!” 
	“You told me to pretend I was Gretel,” 
	protested Ramona. “And Gretel pushed the 
	witch into the oven.” 
	Beezus looked at the cake and burst into 
	tears. 
	Ramona promptly began to cry too. This 
	made Beezus even angrier.“You stop crying,” 
	she ordered Ramona furiously. “It was my 
	birthday cake and I’m the one that’s supposed 
	to be crying.” 
	“Girls!” said Mother in a tired voice. 
	“Ramona, you have been very naughty. 
	You know better than to put anything into 
	the oven. Now go to your room and stay 
	there until I say you can come out.” 
	Sniffling, Ramona started toward the 
	bedroom. 
	159 
	“And don’t you dare put your toys on my 
	bed,” said Beezus. “Mother, can you fix the 
	cake?” 
	“I’m afraid not.” Mother poked at the 
	cake with her finger. “It’s fallen, and anyway 
	it would probably taste like burnt rubber.” 
	Beezus tried to brush the tears out of her 
	eyes. “Ramona always spoils everything. 
	Now I won’t have any birthday cake, and 
	Aunt Beatrice is coming and it won’t be like 
	a birthday at all.” 
	“I know Ramona is a problem but we’ll 
	just have to be patient, because she’s little,” 
	said Mother, as she scraped the cake into the 
	garbage can. “And you will still have a cake. 
	I’ll phone your Aunt Beatrice and have her 
	bring one from the bakery.” 
	“Oh, Mother, will you?” asked Beezus. 
	“That’s what I’ll do,” said Mother. “Now 
	run along and wash your face and you’ll feel 
	better.” 
	160 
	But as Beezus held her face cloth under 
	the faucet she was not at all sure she would 
	feel better. For Ramona to spoil one birthday cake was bad enough, but two . . . 
	Probably nobody else in the whole world 
	had a little sister who had spoiled two birthday cakes on the same day. 
	Beezus scrubbed away the tear stains, 
	feeling more and more sorry for herself for 
	having such a little sister. If Ramona were 
	only bigger, things might be different; but 
	since she was so much younger, she would 
	always be . . . well, a pest. Then the terrible 
	thought came to Beezus again—the thought 
	she had had the time Ramona bit into all 
	the apples and the time she shoved the dog 
	into the bathroom. She tried not to think 
	the thought, but she couldn’t help it. There 
	were times when she did not love Ramona. 
	This was one of them. Everyone knew sisters were supposed to love each other. Look 
	161 
	how much Mother and Aunt Beatrice loved 
	each other. Beezus felt very gloomy indeed 
	as she dried her face. She was a terrible girl 
	who did not love her little sister. Like a 
	wicked sister in a fairy tale. And on her 
	birthday, too, a day that was supposed to be 
	happy. 
	When Beezus went into the living room, 
	Mother switched off the vacuum cleaner, 
	which had been sucking up the crumbs 
	Ramona had sprinkled on the rug. “Aunt 
	Beatrice said she would be delighted to 
	bring a cake. She knows a bakery that makes 
	very special birthday cakes,” she said, smiling 
	at Beezus. “You mustn’t let Ramona spoil 
	your birthday.” 
	Beezus felt a little better. She curled up 
	on the davenport again with 202 Things to 
	Do on a Rainy Afternoon and read about 
	making Christmas tree ornaments out of 
	cellophane straws, until she heard her aunt’s 
	162 
	
	car turn into the driveway. Then she flung 
	her book aside and ran out to greet her. 
	“Happy birthday, darling!” cried Aunt 
	Beatrice, as she set the brake and opened the 
	door of her yellow convertible. 
	Joyfully Beezus ran over to the car and 
	kissed her aunt. “Did you bring the cake?” 
	she asked. 
	“I certainly did,” answered Aunt Beatrice. 
	“The best birthday cake I could find. And 
	that isn’t all I brought. Here, help me carry 
	these packages while I carry the cake. We 
	mustn’t let anything happen to this cake!” 
	And the way Aunt Beatrice laughed 
	made Beezus laugh too. Her aunt gave her 
	three packages, two large and one small, to 
	carry. 
	“The little package is for Ramona,” 
	explained Aunt Beatrice. “So she won’t feel 
	left out.” 
	Mother came out of the house and 
	hugged her sister.“Hello, Bea,” she said.“I’m 
	so glad you could come.What would I ever 
	do without you?” 
	“It’s good to see you, Dorothy,” answered 
	Aunt Beatrice.“And what’s an aunt for if she 
	can’t come to the rescue with a birthday 
	cake once in a while?” 
	As Beezus watched her mother and her 
	164 
	aunt, arm in arm, go into the house, she 
	thought how different they were—Mother 
	so tall and comfortable-looking and Aunt 
	Beatrice so small and gay—and yet how 
	happy they looked together. Smiling, Beezus 
	carried the gifts into the house. Aunt 
	Beatrice always brought such beautiful 
	packages, wrapped in fancy paper and tied 
	with big, fluffy bows. 
	Aunt Beatrice handed the cake box to 
	Mother. “Be sure you put it in a safe place,” 
	she said, and laughed again. 
	“May I open the packages now?” Beezus 
	asked eagerly, although she felt it was almost 
	too bad to untie such beautiful bows. 
	“Of course you may,” answered Aunt 
	Beatrice. 
	“Where’s Ramona?” 
	A subdued Ramona came out of the 
	bedroom to receive her present. She tore off 
	the wrapping, but Beezus painstakingly 
	165 
	untied the ribbon on one of her presents 
	and removed the paper carefully so she 
	wouldn’t tear it. Her new book, 202 Things 
	to Do on a Rainy Afternoon, suggested pasting 
	pretty paper on a gallon ice-cream carton to 
	make a wastebasket. 
	“Oh, Aunt Beatrice,” exclaimed Beezus, 
	as she opened her first package. It was a real 
	grown-up sewing box. It had two sizes of 
	scissors, a fat red pincushion that looked like 
	a tomato, an emery bag that looked like a 
	ripe strawberry, and a tape measure that 
	pulled out of a shiny box. When Beezus 
	pushed the button on the box, the tape 
	measure snapped back inside. The box also 
	had needles, pins, and a thimble. Beezus 
	never wore a thimble, but she thought it 
	would be nice to have one in case she ever 
	wanted to use one.“Oh, Aunt Beatrice,” she 
	said, “it’s the most wonderful sewing box in 
	the whole world. I’ll make you two pot 
	166 
	holders for Christmas!” Then, as Aunt 
	Beatrice laughed, Beezus clapped her hand 
	over her mouth. The pot holder was supposed to be a surprise. 
	Ramona had unwrapped a little steam 
	shovel made of red and yellow plastic, which 
	she was now pushing happily around the rug. 
	Breathlessly Beezus lifted the lid of 
	the second box. “Oh, Aunt Beatrice!” she 
	exclaimed, as she lifted out a dress that was 
	a lovely shade of blue. 
	“It’s just the right shade of blue to match 
	your eyes,” explained Aunt Beatrice. 
	“Is it really?” asked Beezus, delighted that 
	her pretty young aunt liked blue eyes. She 
	was about to tell her about being Sacajawea 
	for the P.T.A. when Father came home from 
	work, and before long dinner was on the 
	table. Mother lit the candles and turned off 
	the dining-room light. How pretty everything looks, thought Beezus. I wish we had 
	167 
	candles on the table every night. 
	After Father had served the chicken and 
	mashed potatoes and peas and Mother had 
	passed the hot rolls, Beezus decided the time 
	had come to tell Aunt Beatrice about being 
	Sacajawea. “Do you know what I did last 
	week?” she began. 
	“I want some jelly,” said Ramona. 
	“You mean, ‘Please pass the jelly,’” corrected Mother, while Beezus waited patiently. 
	“No, what did you do last week?” asked 
	Aunt Beatrice. 
	“Well, last week I—” Beezus began again. 
	“I like purple jelly better than red jelly,” 
	said Ramona. 
	“Ramona, stop interrupting your sister,” 
	said Father. 
	“Well, I do like purple jelly better than 
	red jelly,” insisted Ramona. 
	“Never mind,” said Mother. “Go on, 
	Beezus.” 
	168 
	
	“Last week—” said Beezus, looking at her 
	aunt, who smiled as if she understood. 
	“Excuse me, Beezus,” Mother cut in. 
	“Ramona, we do not put jelly on our 
	mashed potatoes.” 
	“I like jelly on my mashed potatoes.” 
	Ramona stirred potato and jelly around 
	with her fork. 
	“Ramona, you heard what your mother 
	said.” Father looked stern. 
	“If I can put butter on my mashed potatoes, why can’t I put jelly? I put butter and 
	jelly on toast,” said Ramona. 
	Father couldn’t help laughing. “That’s a 
	hard question to answer.” 
	“But Mother—” Beezus began. 
	“I like jelly on my mashed potatoes,” 
	interrupted Ramona, looking sulky. 
	“You can’t have jelly on your mashed 
	potatoes, because you aren’t supposed to,” 
	said Beezus crossly, forgetting Sacajawea for 
	the moment. 
	“That’s as good an answer as any,” agreed 
	Father.“There are some things we don’t do, 
	because we aren’t supposed to.” 
	Ramona looked even more sulky. 
	“Where is my Merry Sunshine?” Mother 
	asked. 
	Ramona scowled. “I am too a Merry 
	Sunshine!” she shouted angrily. 
	170 
	“Ramona,” said Mother quietly, “you 
	may go to your room until you can behave 
	yourself.” 
	And serves you right, too, thought 
	Beezus. 
	“I am too a Merry Sunshine,” insisted 
	Ramona, but she got down from the table 
	and ran out of the room. 
	Everyone was silent for a moment. 
	“Beezus, what was it you were trying to tell 
	me?” Aunt Beatrice asked. 
	And finally Beezus got to tell about leading Lewis and Clark to Oregon, with a doll 
	tied to Mother’s breadboard for a papoose, 
	and how her teacher told her what a clever 
	girl she was to think of using a breadboard 
	for a papoose board. Somehow she did not 
	feel the same about telling the story after all 
	Ramona’s interruptions. Being Sacajawea 
	for the P.T.A. did not seem very important 
	now. No matter what she did, Ramona 
	171 
	always managed to spoil it. Unhappily, 
	Beezus went on eating her chicken and 
	peas. It was another one of those terrible 
	times when she did not love her little sister. 
	“You mustn’t let Ramona get you 
	down,” whispered Mother. 
	Beezus did not answer. What a terrible 
	girl she was not to love her little sister! How 
	shocked and surprised Mother would be if 
	she knew. 
	“Beezus, you look as if something is 
	bothering you,” remarked Aunt Beatrice. 
	Beezus looked down at her plate. How 
	could she ever tell such an awful thing? 
	“Why don’t you tell us what is wrong?” 
	Aunt Beatrice suggested. “Perhaps we could 
	help.” 
	She sounded so interested and so understanding that Beezus discovered she really 
	wanted to tell what was on her mind. 
	“Sometimes I just don’t love Ramona!” she 
	172 
	blurted out, to get it over with. There! She 
	had said it right out loud.And on her birthday, too. Now everyone would know what 
	a terrible girl she was. 
	“My goodness, is that all that bothers 
	you?” Mother sounded surprised. 
	Beezus nodded miserably. 
	“Why, there’s no reason why you should 
	love Ramona all the time,” Mother went on. 
	“After all, there are probably lots of times 
	when she doesn’t love you.” 
	Now it was Beezus’s turn to be surprised— 
	surprised and relieved at the same time. She 
	wondered why she hadn’t thought of it that 
	way before. 
	Aunt Beatrice smiled. “Dorothy,” she said 
	to Mother,“do you remember the time I—” 
	She began to laugh so hard she couldn’t finish 
	the sentence. 
	“You took my doll with the beautiful 
	yellow curls and dyed her hair with black 
	173 
	shoe dye,” finished Mother, and the two 
	grown-up sisters went into gales of laughter. 
	“I didn’t love you a bit that time,” admitted 
	Mother. “I was mad at you for days.” 
	“And you were always so bossy, because 
	you were older,” said Aunt Beatrice. “I’m 
	sure I didn’t love you at all when you were 
	supposed to take me to school and made me 
	walk about six feet behind you, because you 
	didn’t want people to know you had to look 
	after me.” 
	“Mother!” exclaimed Beezus in shocked 
	delight. 
	“Did I do that?” laughed Mother. “I had 
	forgotten all about it.” 
	“What else did Mother do?” Beezus 
	asked eagerly. 
	“She was terribly fussy,” said Aunt Beatrice. 
	“We had to share a room and she used to get 
	mad because I was untidy. Once she threw all 
	my paper dolls into the wastebasket, because I 
	174 
	had left them on her side of the dresser. That 
	was another time we didn’t love each other.” 
	Fascinated, Beezus hoped this interesting 
	conversation would continue. Imagine 
	Mother and Aunt Beatrice quarreling! 
	“Oh, but the worst thing of all!” said 
	Mother. “Remember—” 
	“I’ll never forget!” exclaimed Aunt 
	Beatrice, as if she knew what Mother was 
	talking about. “Wasn’t I awful?” 
	“Perfectly terrible,” agreed Mother, wiping 
	her eyes because she was laughing so hard. 
	“What happened?” begged Beezus, who 
	could not wait to find out what dreadful 
	thing Aunt Beatrice had done when she was 
	a girl. “Mother, tell what happened.” 
	“It all began when the girls began to take 
	autograph albums to school,” began Mother 
	and then went off into another fit of laughter. “Oh, Beatrice, you tell it.” 
	“Of course I wanted an autograph album 
	175 
	too,” continued Aunt Beatrice. Beezus 
	nodded, because she, too, had an autograph 
	album. “Well, your mother, who was always 
	very sensible, saved her allowance and 
	bought a beautiful album with a red cover 
	stamped in gold. How I envied her!” 
	“As soon as your Aunt Beatrice got her 
	allowance she always ran right over to the 
	school store and spent it,” added Mother. 
	“Yes, and on the most awful junk,” agreed 
	Aunt Beatrice. “Licorice whips, and pencils 
	that were square instead of round, and I 
	don’t know what all.” 
	“Yes, but what about the autograph 
	album?” Beezus asked. 
	“Well, when I—oh, I’m almost ashamed 
	to tell it,” said Aunt Beatrice. 
	“Oh, go on,” urged Mother.“It’s priceless.” 
	“Well, when I saw your mother with that 
	brand-new autograph album that she bought, 
	because she was so sensible, I was annoyed, 
	176 
	because I wanted one too and I hadn’t saved 
	my allowance. And then she asked me if I’d 
	like to sign my name in it.” 
	“It was my night to set the table,” added 
	Mother. “I never should have left her alone 
	with it.” 
	“But what happened?” Beezus could 
	hardly wait to find out. 
	“I sat down at the desk and picked up a 
	pen, planning to write on the last page, ‘By 
	hook or by crook I’ll be the last in your 
	book,’ ” said Aunt Beatrice. 
	“Oh, did people write that in those days, 
	too?” Beezus was surprised, because she had 
	thought this was something very new to 
	write in an autograph album. 
	“But I didn’t write it,” continued Aunt 
	Beatrice. “I just sat there wishing I had an 
	autograph album, and then I took the pen 
	and wrote my name on every single page in 
	the book!” 
	177 
	“Aunt Beatrice! You didn’t! Not in 
	Mother’s brand-new autograph album!” 
	Beezus was horrified and delighted at the 
	same time.What a terrible thing to do! 
	“She certainly did,” said Mother,“and not 
	just plain Beatrice Haswell, either. She 
	wrote Beatrice Ann Haswell, Miss Bea 
	Haswell, B. A. Haswell, Esquire, and everything she could think of.When she couldn’t 
	think of any more ways to write her name 
	she started all over again.” 
	“Oh, Aunt Beatrice, how perfectly 
	awful,” exclaimed Beezus, with a touch of 
	admiration in her voice. 
	“Yes, wasn’t it?” agreed Aunt Beatrice. “I 
	don’t know what got into me.” 
	“And what did Mother do?” inquired 
	Beezus, eager for the whole story. 
	“We had a dreadful quarrel and I got 
	spanked,” said Aunt Beatrice. “Your mother 
	didn’t love me one little bit for a long, long 
	178 
	time. And I wouldn’t admit it, but I felt terrible because I had spoiled her autograph 
	album. Fortunately Christmas came along 
	about that time and we were both given 
	albums and that put an end to the whole 
	thing.” 
	Why, thought Beezus,Aunt Beatrice used 
	to be every bit as awful as Ramona. And yet 
	look how nice she is now. Beezus could 
	scarcely believe it. And now Mother and 
	Aunt Beatrice, who had quarreled when 
	they were girls, loved each other and 
	thought the things they had done were 
	funny! They actually laughed about it. Well, 
	maybe when she was grown up she would 
	think it was funny that Ramona had put 
	eggshells in one birthday cake and baked her 
	rubber doll with another. Maybe she wouldn’t 
	think Ramona was so exasperating, after all. 
	Maybe that was just the way things were 
	with sisters. A lovely feeling of relief came 
	179 
	over Beezus.What if she didn’t love Ramona 
	all the time? It didn’t matter at all. She was 
	just like any other sister. 
	“Mother,” whispered Beezus, happier 
	than she had felt in a long time, “I hope 
	Ramona comes back before we have my 
	birthday cake.” 
	“Don’t worry,” Mother said, smiling.“I’m 
	sure she wouldn’t miss it for anything.” 
	And sure enough, in a few minutes 
	Ramona appeared from the bedroom and 
	took her place at the table. “I can behave 
	myself,” she said. 
	“It’s about time,” observed Father. 
	Beezus watched Ramona eating her cold 
	mashed potatoes and jelly and thought how 
	much easier things would be now that she 
	could look at her sister when she was exasperating and think, Ha-ha, Ramona, this is 
	one of those times when I don’t have to love 
	you. 
	180 
	
	“Girls with birthdays don’t have to help 
	clear the table,” said Mother, beginning to 
	carry out the dishes. 
	Beezus waited expectantly for the most 
	important moment of the day. She heard her 
	mother take the cake out of its box and 
	strike a match to light the candles.“Oh,” she 
	breathed happily, when Mother appeared in 
	the doorway with the cake in her hands. It 
	was the most beautiful cake she had ever 
	seen—pink with a wreath of white roses 
	made of icing, and ten pink candles that 
	threw a soft glowing light on Mother’s face. 
	“ ‘Happy birthday to you,’ ” sang Mother 
	and Father and Aunt Beatrice and Ramona. 
	“ ‘Happy birthday, dear Beezus, happy birthday to you.’ ” 
	“Make a wish,” said Father. 
	Beezus paused a minute.Then she closed 
	her eyes and thought, I wish all my birthdays 
	would turn out to be as wonderful as this 
	one finally did. She opened her eyes and 
	blew as hard as she could. 
	“Your wish is granted!” cried Aunt 
	Beatrice, smiling across the ten smoking candles. 
	“ 
	‘Happy birthday, dear Beezus, happy 
	birthday to you!’ ” sang Ramona at the top 
	of her voice. 
	“All right, Ramona,” said Mother with a 
	182 
	
	touch of exasperation in her voice.“Once is 
	enough.” 
	But at that moment Beezus did not think 
	her little sister was exasperating at all. 
	183
	183 
	About the Author 
	Beverly Cleary is one of America’s most popular authors. Born in 
	McMinnville, Oregon, she lived on a farm in Yamhill until she was 
	six and then moved to Portland. After college, as the children’s 
	librarian in Yakima, Washington, she was challenged to find stories 
	for non-readers. She wrote her first book, HENRY HUGGINS, in 
	response to a boy’s question, 
	“Where are the books about kids like us?” 
	Mrs. Cleary’s books have earned her many prestigious awards, 
	including the American Library Association’s Laura Ingalls Wilder 
	Award, presented in recognition of her lasting contribution to 
	children’s literature. Her DEAR MR. HENSHAW was awarded the 
	1984 John Newbery Medal, and both RAMONA QUIMBY, AGE 8 
	and RAMONA AND HER FATHER have been named Newbery 
	Honor Books. In addition, her books have won more than thirty-five 
	statewide awards based on the votes of her young readers. Her 
	characters, including Henry Huggins, Ellen Tebbits, Otis Spofford, 
	and Beezus and Ramona Quimby, as well as Ribsy, Socks, and Ralph 
	S. Mouse, have delighted children for generations. Mrs. Cleary lives 
	in coastal California. 
	Visit Ramona Quimby and all of her friends in The World of Beverly 
	Cleary at www.beverlycleary.com. 
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	Enjoy all of 
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FEATURING 
	MORE GREAT FICTION 
	RAMONA QUIMBY: 
	BY BEVERLY CLEARY: 
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	Ellen Tebbits 
	Ramona the Pest 
	Otis Spofford 
	Ramona the Brave 
	Fifteen 
	Ramona and Her Father 
	The Luckiest Girl 
	Ramona and Her Mother 
	Jean and Johnny 
	Ramona Quimby, Age 8 
	Emily’s Runaway 
	Imagination 
	Ramona Forever 
	Sister of the Bride 
	Ramona’s World 
	Mitch and Amy 
FEATURING 
	Socks 
	HENRY HUGGINS: 
	Dear Mr. Henshaw 
	Henry Huggins 
	Muggie Maggie 
	Henry and Beezus 
	Strider 
	Henry and Ribsy 
	Two Times the Fun 
	Henry and the Paper Route 
	Henry and the Clubhouse 
AND DON'T MISS 
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	AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: 
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	A Girl from Yamhill 
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	My Own Two Feet 
	The Mouse 
	and the Motorcycle 
	Runaway Ralph 
	Ralph S. Mouse 
	Credits
	Typography by Amy Ryan 
	Jacket art © 2006 by Tracy Dockray 
	Jacket design by Amy Ryan 
	Copyright
	BEEZUS AND RAMONA. Copyright © 1955 by Beverly Cleary. All 
	rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright 
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Document Outline
	Cover Image 
	Title Page 
	Contents Chapter One: Beezus and Her Little Sister Chapter Two: Beezus and Her Imagination Chapter Three: Ramona and Ribsy Chapter Four: Ramona and the Apples Chapter Five: A Party at the Quimbys�Chapter Six: Beezus�s Birthday About the Author Enjoy all of Beverly Cleary�s books Credits Copyright Notice About the Publisher