Letter to My Favorite Pest

To: Miss Ramona Geraldine Quimby

Klickitat Street

Portland, Oregon

USA

Dear Ramona:

I thought I saw you at the Community Pool the other day, but I wasn't sure. The little girl---sorry!---the young lady had sort of short dark hair and was wearing a striped two-piece bathing suit that could in no way be described as a bikini. I noticed her because she was trying very hard to do a perfect cannonball off the diving board. She climbed out as soon as she could and ran to get back into line for another turn until Lyle, the nicest of the lifeguards, had to blow his whistle and yell, "No running!"

(Trust me about Lyle being nice; three years ago, before he grew up and went to college, he used to mow my lawn. Think of him as an older version of Henry Huggins.)

It was good to see that all the to-do of having a Walt Disney movie made about you and your sister Beezus hasn't gone to your head. By the way, how does Beezus feel about getting second billing? After all, the very first of the books Beverly Cleary wrote about your family was called "Beezus and Ramona." Of course, the scriptwriters for the movie took bits and pieces from all the books---"Ramona the Pest," "Ramona the Brave," "Ramona and Her Father," "Ramona and Her Mother," Ramona Quimby, Age 8," "Ramona Forever," and "Ramona's World"---so I guess putting your name first on the marquee is only fair.

One result of the movie that must make both you and Mrs. Cleary, the former children's librarian, very happy is that all summer your books have been very hard to find at all the public libraries. I know this because I wanted to read them myself, never having had the pleasure many years ago, when my two daughters were your age. By the time they could read chapter books, they chose their own at the library and didn't ask me to read to them, so they've known you lots longer than I have.

I must say, I am charmed to make your acquaintance.

You are nothing if not an original, yet so very familiar. Before I read the books, I heard an interview on NPR with Elizabeth Allen, the movie's director, who said Mrs. Cleary still gets countless letters from children and adults alike who tell her, "I am Ramona!" What they mean is they remember making tin-can stilts, they remember the irresistable impulse to wiggle a loose tooth with their tongue, they remember how awful it felt to throw up in school, they remember worrying that their kindergarten teacher didn't like them and that they'd never be as perfect as their big sister. (Ah, the secret is out: I was a pesty little sister, too!)

In their own lives there were Yard Apes and corkscrew-curled prissy little girls like Susan Kushner and rings on the playground and library books and boxes of crayons and the unfairness of having to go to bed before the eight o'clock movie was over. There were family cats like Picky-Picky, spoiled neighborhood brats like Willa Jean and her friend, "Bruce who doesn't wee-wee in the sandbox," as well as nasty old ladies like Mrs. Pitt, who was always sweeping her front walk and making sure kids didn't throw candy wrappers on her lawn. (Just for the record, I rarely sweep my front walk and I don't yell at small children.)

They also had good friends like Howie Kemp, who were willing to let them ride their new two-wheelers and knew the thrill of getting a pair of brand-new red rubber boots. Like you, it impelled them to make "a joyful noise until the Lord."

Like you, too, their biggest worry was that their parents wouldn't love them or each other. Their biggest happiness was being "warm and snug and loved like little bears and bunnies" in the books your mother read to you at bedtime when you were little.

Dear girl, whether you think of yourself as "just plain old messy Ramona" or "Blunderful, wonderful me," for children everywhere---and those of us who forgot we grew up---you are the "roll modle" you aspired to be for your baby sister, Roberta. Don't ever change, not even on your tenth birthday, when you become a "zeroteen."