Ramona the Pest

Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary is a middle-grade novel published in 1968 by HarperCollins. Ramona the Pest is the second book in a series colloquially known as the “Ramona series,” comprised of eight books that revolve around the family and friends of Ramona Quimby, a spunky young girl navigating the ups and downs of being a kid in school and with her family. Beverly Cleary is a celebrated author of many children’s, middle-grade, and young adult books. In 1981, she won the National Book Award for Ramona and her Mother, the fifth book in the Ramona series, and in 1984 she won the Newbery Medal for her title Dear Mr. Henshaw.

The Ramona series is “realistic fiction” in that there are no fantastical elements and both plotline and characters are true-to-life. Ramona the Pest is set in the same neighborhood as Cleary’s “Henry Huggins series,” who is also a character in the book. Cleary creates an entire universe of characters set in the same neighborhood, each of whom she explores in a separate series. As the Ramona series goes on, readers watch Ramona grow from a young child (in Ramona the Pest, she is about 5 years old) into a pre-teen (in Ramona’s World, she is about 10 years old).