Customer Reviews

Emily's Runaway Imagination

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ok, I'm a late bloomer. I've just discovered Beverly Cleary in my middle-age and did I pick the right book to start with! Emily is a charming child, and I'm quickly discovering how Ms. Cleary can really "think like a child". Emily's adventures are always questionable but always fun!

I just reread this book as a teacher/adult. I read it as a child almost twenty years ago, I liked it back then too. Very sweet and humorous. It is a great picture of Americana with Grandpa's automobile, Sunday after-church picnics, and party-line telephones! And then the pigs with the rotton apples during Mama's elegant party. Terrific!! I can see the characters in my grandparents.

Great way to remind children to get outside and play or read instead of sitting in front of the television. How did we survive with out video games? The computer? Wonderful to read aloud for quality time.

Beverly Cleary was my favorite author as a child. Now as a teacher and parent, I get to share her books with a new generation.

I will never forget this book. I read it in elementary I am 28 now. Everytime I hear the word imagination I think of Emily. I will never forget her trying to Clorax a horse. Many other things I read or see somewhere else remind me of this book. I was hooked on Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume books growing up. Some books I read do not exist anymore. Instead of reading Sweet Valley High I was hooked on Canby Hall books. Christoper Pike got me into mystery thriller stories until he got too much into the vampire stuff which I was not interested in at the time. I have looked up the books I read when I was older and they were no longer being printed. I am glad to find out my kids can still get Cleary and Blume books almost 30 yrs after they were written.

If you like adventure then Emily's Runaway Imagination is for you! It's about a girl who liven in Pitchfork, Oregon in the first half of the 1900's and has a good imagination. Once she chloroxes the horse. Once she makes a pie crust that floats to the top of her pie, and once she thinks her mom is trading her for a monkey wrench! I hope you like this book because I certainly do.

Emily's Runaway Imagination by Bevery Cleary is a good story. Emily is a girl who lives on a farm. She had some wild ideas. She wanted her father's horse to turn into a snow-white steed so, she tried to bleach it with Clorox. One of her good ideas was to set up a library in her town. I liked this story because it made me laugh. It's fun to read about crazy things kids do. The author wrote a realistic fiction to show us how to have crazy ideas. She also wanted us to see that we should not always do the crazy things that pop into our head!

Unlike most of Beverly Cleary's books, this one is based on the author's early childhood on a farm in Yamhill in the early twentieth century. It is a wonderful glimpse into the life of a little girl who licked the stamp on the envelope that led to the first town library. (The author's real-life childhood was not nearly so idyllic, but her love for the farm and the old country and town people shines through.) This book is unique and wonderful.

Emily Bartlett just wants a library. So, her mother writes in for one, and guess what! Pitchfork is going to have a library! While waiting for the books to arrive from Salem, Emily feeds the hogs a treat, bleeches a horse, and scares her cousin half to death. Mama doesn't really know how Emily can get into so much trouble, she just says "Emily, don't let your imagination run away with you!" Emily does try, but hey, if you live in the west, during a time when cars are new, airplanes are hardley ever seen, and no one has dreamed up the TV yet, what are you supposed to do?

Of all of Beverly Cleary's children's books, this one is the most autobiographical. These stories ring completely true in their gently comic take on rural American life in the 1920's--reminding me of stories that I have heard from my own parents and grandparents. In a world full of close cousins, community events, and farm work, Mrs. Cleary spins many a wonderfully warm and nostalgic tale. I especially liked the story about the pigs that got drunk on fermented apples--I laughed til I cried as I read my children that story! The author also gets it right how in a small country town a secret is impossible to keep--as her young protagonist Emily makes the error of correcting her Chinese neighbor's pronunciation of the name of her dog "Prince" as "Plince"--so that from that day forward everybody in community referred to that dog as "Plince"--much to the embarrassment of poor Emily! Emily, as a stand in for the young Beverly Cleary, also gives you insight to a love of reading that would later lead to the writing of these wonderful books--as the girl uses the dollar she won in a local costume contest to buy the yearned-for novel "Black Beauty."

Emily is a fourth-grader in the 1920's. She is a well-loved only child. And her story is funny, heartwarming, and enjoyable. Wise parents, close-knit community. This is a great read-aloud book - 9 chapters, 221 pages. A few line-drawing illustrations. If your family liked Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, try this book.

Language: A couple of replacement curses: "What in the Sam Hill?" and "I'll be gol-dinged."

***update: if you love this book, then I think you will also love "Ginger Pye" by Eleanor Estes.

An absolutely charming and sweet book that I was sad to reach the end of! Emily is not a spoiled brat, but a well-behaved little girl who has an active imagination and manages to get into a few scrapes and misunderstandings. Another enjoyable book by Beverly Cleary.