(ahem, VERY BIG issue with this age group, speaking from experience with my girls.) Until she learns to resolve the issue….much later, after lots of suffering. Ramona hears someone important talking about her, and it devastates her.

People are always going to talk about you.

In Ramona’s case, the new trend of cracking a hard-boiled egg on your head turns out to be a disaster. She has issues with making that Q and comes a some decision about that.

Learning to write cursive is hard, and not everyone can do it well.

He steals her shiny new pink eraser on the first day of school and won’t give it back. In this instance, Ramona’s class has Danny.

There’s always that one kid in the class that makes fun of you.

Here are some of the best things about this book: Now, as a mother, Ramona is going through the things that my eight-year-old twin girls are going through, and I am lucky enough to be living it all over again. As a child, I latched onto Ramona because she went through some of the same things that I went through. Cleary identified a feeling that I felt when I was a young child. Isn’t this how we all feel when we are young? Ms. Ramona feels like she is always being compared to her sister and like nobody really likes her that much. I love every one of them, but this is my favorite.

The wonderful Beverly Cleary has written several books about sweet Ramona. So when I saw that she had a couple of books that qualified for this challenge, I had to pick up one. (I wrote about that here.) She’s in fantastic company, but she is a girl after my own heart. My Thoughts: I chose Ramona Quimby, Age 8 as one of my reads for the Award Winning Reads Challenge for a couple of reasons: Not only is it a 1982 Newbery Honor Award Winner, but Ramona Geraldine Quimby is my all-time favorite girl children’s book character. Can Ramona really handle a new school, help out a home, put up with Willa Jean, and still keep smiling? -(summary from book cover) Ramona knows the family is depending on her to be brave with all these changes, but sometimes it’s hard.

Ramona quimby age eight