Customer Reviews

Ramona and Her Father [Ramona Quimby]

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
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Beverly Cleary wrote some of the funniest books ever written for children with her Henry Huggins/Ramona series. However, her Newbery honor winner "Ramona and Her Father" marks the beginning of Mrs. Cleary's decision to include more serious situations into the lives of her characters to go along with their comic adventures. This book revolves around the very unfunny and realistic situation of Ramona's father losing his job. (Undoubtedly, Mrs. Cleary drew upon her own childhood memories of her father's unemployment during the Depression to tell this story.)

Ramona's life is turned upside down by her father's unemployment. Her father is cranky and depressed, her mother tired from overwork, and older sister Beezus, the funloving tomboy of the Henry Huggins books, is now a temperamental teenager. The book chronicles Ramona's attempts to deal with this difficult situation, and results are touching and very often hilarious. Despite its serious subject matter, the book still retains Mrs. Cleary's comic touch. This is one very funny book! The chapter about Ramona's hope of becoming a TV commericial actor, which she believes will end her family's problems, is one of the funniest Mrs. Cleary ever wrote. If I had to pick one book from the entire Henry Huggins/Ramona series "Ramona and Her Father" would be the one. Ramona's experiences with a difficult family situation are told with humor and candor.

Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary

Have you ever thought your father cared about you a lot? Well in Ramona and Her Father, her father loses his job, and starts smoking! Ramona's family is acting mad. But Ramona's father is acting nice to her, most of the time. Find out what happens in Ramona and Her Father.

I liked this book a lot, because Ramona went through all the trouble just to make her family happy.

I think Beverly Cleary wanted to share that even though you are upset with your family you still love them. I think the author wanted to teach us that no family is perfect.

Ramona and Her Father is a great book. I especially liked the part when Ramona got burrs in her hair. When they tried to get the burrs out they couldn't. I think that this book is good because it's full of adventures.

This is a great book about a girl and her relationships with her father. She tries to help her father with his struggles when he lost his job. This is a great book and I would recommend this book to anyone.

UNBELIEVEABLE!
I can't believe that was a book. It seemed so real.This is definitely a book you will remember forever. The setting of this wonderful book is in America in modern times. Most of the story takes place at Ramona's house or at her school. The characters are Ramona, a serious eight-year old girl with a lot on her mind, Mr.Quimby, Ramona's father and Beezus, Ramona's sister. Ramona has a normal life untill one payday when Ramona's father loses his job and starts smoking. One of the interesting parts is when Ramona's cat falls into their jack-o-lantern. Does everything work out for Ramona and her father? Find out! I think this is an A+ book.

Beverly Cleary does it once again with this astonishing book Ramona and Her Father. If you are dealing with a situation that you don't quite know how to explain to children, I think this book does just that. Living in todays world is tough enough for an adult to handle let alone a child. This book deals with the ecomical challenges of life from the perspective of a child. Beverly Cleary turns challenge into humor,and compassion. In this book Ramona, a second grader faces many challenges and wants to do what is best for her family. What will Ramona do? How will she deal with these challenges? Ramona and Her Father is a Newberry Honor Award recipient and a truly delightful book for all.

Beverly Cleary is a very talented and gifted children's book author and her technique of the use funny adventures in them help to engage the reader in her books. However, in "Ramona and Her Father," she brings up a more serious issue for the characters in her book along with the many silly adventures of Ramona. This book talks about the serious situation of Ramona's father losing his job. Ramona is a typical kid, she is always getting herself into sticky situations, but like everyone else she worries about her family. When Ramona's father loses his job, it turns Ramona and her family's life upside down. Ramona's mother ends up getting a full time job while Ramona's father is at home and ends up becoming depressed. Because Ramona's father is depressed Ramona and her sister, Beezus, must not do anything that could further shake up their father. Ramona with her silly self gets into different scrapes and situations that are hilarious and many children could relate to.

This book is very funny and really puts a spin on the situation of her father losing his job. It can be a very relatable book nowadays because of the downturn of the economy. We liked the style of the writing because it tells the situation from a child's perspective. One is able to see how Ramona views the adults in her life. We get to see how her thought process is behind some of her crazy antics. One of the best parts of the book was when Beverly Cleary wanted to become an Actress in commercials because that would end up fixing all their problems.

Beverly Cleary most likely based this book off her childhood experience of when her father lost his job during the Depression. We believe that it was a good topic to touch on and that Beverly Cleary did a wonderful job doing so. Carol mentions how it reminds her of when her father lost his job when she was in high school. She realizes that it is a little different for the fact that he was able to find a job within a couple months after but she remembers feeling very concerned and wondering what was going to happen.

We loved the book and enjoyed reading it. Ramona's Father brings up a serious topic that is put into a child's perspective which makes it easier to understand and realize that there is always an upside to all situations. As education majors, we highly recommend this book to be read/on the bookshelves of most 4th-5th grade classrooms.

The book I read was Ramona and her Father. This book is about a girl a named Ramona and her father. Her dad was fired from his job, so that meant that he would get to spend more time with Ramona. She was happy about getting to spend time with her dad. But her dad smoked and she did not like that. It was bad enough that they weren't going to have much money since her dad wasn't working but then he was spending the money he did have on cigarettes. Ramona did everything she could to try to get her dad to stop, but he just wouldn't. But they did other things together that Ramona did like. They did things like draw big pictures and they got to spend a lot of time together. Ramona liked to be able to spend so much time with her dad but she didn't like the fact that he smoked.

The main character was Ramona. Her appearance is a little different than most peoples because she just seems a little weird at times. Her personality seems ok until her sister Beezus comes around, then Ramona always fights with her. Some of the traits that are the same with Ramona and I are that she always fights with her older sister and I always fight with my older brother. Also I like to spend time with my dad and so does she. Some of the things that are different between Ramona and I is that she is a lot younger than me. Her dad smokes and mine doesn't. She has an older sister and I have an older brother.

I liked this book because it reminded me a lot like me. My favorite part was when Ramona was trying to make her dad stop smoking and her and Beezus made cigarettes out of paper and wrote stuff on them and put it in their dad's cigarette box instead of his cigarettes. Yes, I would recommend this book to a friend.

Since no one seems to have left a review pertaining to the audio edition, I thought I'd add my 2 cents. Stockard Channing's reading of all the Ramona books is excellent. She puts a lot of emotion into her readings and gives what I consider an almost theatrical performance. It's been 10 years or so since I last listened to one of her readings, and I can still hear her voice in my head when I re-read the Ramona books. Definitely think about buying this set. They're perfect for long car trips or just sitting around the radio at home. :)

There's something amazing about the Ramona books (except, I'm sorry to say, Ramona's World, which was written in 1999; while there were some nice plot moments, Cleary has lost her flair for writing, or has lost a wonderful editor, because the book lacked the charm of all the others).

The family dynamic is so well presented. The Quimbys, which different from my own family in many ways, are a family I could always relate to. Cleary also has a gift for prose; her understated sentences amusingly express everything the reader needs to know (even a very young reader), and never do so clumsily, or in a way that insults readers' understanding. Ramona is also one of the most memorable characters I have ever encountered. All of her emotions are completely believable and understandable; reading Ramona books, I always wanted so desperately for everything to work out right for her, and Cleary is very wise in deciding when it will and when it won't.

If there are children and parents who have not yet discovered the joy of reading and rereading Ramona, aloud or silently, I cannot urge them more strongly to try the books out right away. They're simply wonderful.