Ten random things: April 13

[jheaton]

Ten books by Beverly Cleary:

1. The Growing-Up Feet (1967)
2. Emily's Runaway Imagination (1961)
3. Janet's Thingamajigs (1987)
4. Ramona and Her Mother (1979)
5. Beezus and Ramona (1955)
6. Henry and Ribsy (1954)
7. Henry and Beezus (1952)
8. Ramona and Her Father (1977)
9. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (1981)
10. Here's Beaver! (1961)

Per petzipellepingo, today is Beverly Cleary's birthday! I remember a conversation I had about the Ramona books not long ago. Someone was complaining that the recent Ramona and Beezus movie was set in the present day rather than in the past, as (for the complainer's perspective) the Ramona book was. But the interesting thing about the Ramona books is that Cleary wrote them to be contemporaneous to whatever era in which she wrote them. The first Ramona book, Beezus and Ramona, is pretty obviously set in or about 1955, the year it was written. Ramona and Her Father, written twenty-two years later, is clearly set during the Carter era--Mt Quimby loses his job, and Ramona get the idea of earning money for the family by appearing in a television commercial--even though Ramona is only about four years older. Setting the movie in the aughts makes perfect sense, because if Cleary had written any Ramona books after Ramona's World, they certainly would have taken place in the 21st century.