Beezus and Ramona

Beverly Cleary gets the whole problem of Beezus and Ramona into the first line of it. Beezus Quimby is nine, her sister Ramona is four, and Beezus's biggest trouble is Ramona.

What happens

Not a dramatic trouble. Ramona blows down her straw instead of sucking, to see what happens. She wipes her finger paints on next door's cat. She rides her tricycle round the living room with a harmonica clamped in her teeth, so it groans oh dear, oh dear on one note while Beezus is trying to sew.

And she has a favourite book. A terrible one, about a steam shovel that wants to be a bulldozer, and she wants it read aloud again. And again. Their father has banned it outright and their mother is always too busy, so it falls to Beezus, who has to make the noises.

This is what Cleary is so good at. Nothing enormous happens and every single bit of it is true. Beezus takes Ramona to the library to find a better book and Ramona insists on wearing paper Easter bunny ears (in September), and hops up and down to make them flop, and every adult they pass thinks she is adorable. Beezus walks slightly behind her the whole way and hopes nobody thinks they're together.

Any older sibling will recognise that walk.

The book is also honest about something most children's books tiptoe around, which is that Beezus doesn't always like her sister and feels dreadful about it. Ramona is not naughty exactly. She simply cannot see why the rules apply to her. She shows a stranger her scab. She tells people her eyes are brown and white, and they are, in a way. She is completely certain she can write her own name.

For a reader who is themselves the sensible eldest, this will land hard and happily. For an only child or a youngest, Ramona is just extremely funny.

A couple of practical notes. It's American, and it shows in small ways, mostly vocabulary rather than anything confusing. There's nothing here to upset anyone at all. No peril, no cruelty, no loss. The worst thing that happens is embarrassment, which at nine is quite bad enough.

It was written in the 1950s and the household is of its time, with a mother at home and a father coming in from work. The feelings, though, haven't dated by so much as a day.

What to read next

If your reader wants more of the same street rather than more of the same sister, Henry and Beezus is in the library too. Beezus turns up in that one with a baton she cannot yet twirl, Ramona is tied to a bush by her tricycle, and the whole thing is set off by a dog and a joint of raw meat.