History Literature / RamonaQuimby

* FoodAndBodyComparison: Ramona hurls out an insult she'd heard on the playground without knowing what it meant at her sister Beezus; Pizza Face. Unfortunately, Beezus does know what it means, and feels horribly betrayed by her little sister for believing she was poking at her insecurities regarding her acne. The two reconcile later, as Ramona recognized that Beezus was highly upset, and explained that she didn't know what it meant when she said it, which Beezus accepts.

* ArrangedFriendship: Ramona's mother wants her to be friends with Susan, the snooty TeachersPet, because the Quimby parents and the Kushner parents are friends, and doesn't seem to understand that Ramona and Susan dislike each other. In ''Ramona's World'', Ramona's mother makes her invite Susan to her birthday party despite her protests that Susan will ruin it. She gets proven right when Susan makes a big show of eating an apple instead of cake and says that birthday cake is covered in germs, which starts a small argument among the guests. However, after Daisy calls her out for being rude, Susan cries and reveals that she knows nobody likes her because she always has to be perfect all the time, which helps Ramona understand her better and is implied to set them on the path to becoming real friends.

* CanonDiscontinuity: In ''Beezus and Ramona'', Beezus and Henry were evenly matched at checkers, whereas in the earlier Henry Huggins series, Beezus trouncing Henry at checkers was a running gag. Maybe Henry got better.

* TeachersUnfavoriteStudent: In ''Ramona the Brave'', Ramona is the unfavourite student to stern Mrs. Griggs, who is quick to punish her for perceived misbehavior. When Ramona helps her classmate Davy (who is dyslexic) with his work, Mrs. Griggs sees it as an inability to "keep her hands to herself". When Susan copies Ramona's paper-bag owl and Mrs. Griggs praises it, Ramona feels she can't tell Mrs. Griggs because the teacher's favorite refrain is "NobodyLikesATattletale," so she crumples Susan's owl and then her own out of frustration. Mrs. Griggs punishes Ramona for this by making her apologize to Susan in front of the whole class.

* StatingTheSimpleSolution: Ramona of all people provides one when Uncle Hobart forgets to order flowers for the church for the wedding, and it's June so the florist won't be able to do a rush job. As Aunt Beatrice is crying from the wedding stress, Ramona innocently asks why they can't just get flowers from the yard or pick them. Beezus vetoes their yard because the pansies have bugs, but Grandpa Day says that's ActuallyAGoodIdea. He says he knows some people who live nearby, and the neighbors will pitch in to help since they like the Quimbys. Sure enough, the neighbors happily donate some peonies and laurel.

* StatingTheSimpleSolution: Ramona of all people provides one when Uncle Hobart forgets to order flowers for the church for the wedding, and it's June so the florist won't be able to do a rush job. As Aunt Beatrice is crying from the wedding stress, Ramona innocently asks why they can't just get flowers from the yard or pick them. Beatrice vetoes their yard because the pansies have bugs, but Grandpa Day says that's ActuallyAGoodIdea. He says he knows some people who live nearby, and the neighbors will pitch in to help since they like the Quimbys. Sure enough, the neighbors happily donate some peonies and laurel.

* MoreInsultingThanIntended: Ramona angrily calls her sister Beezus "pizza-face". She merely thinks of it as an insult that she's heard bandied around the playground. But she realizes when she sees Beezus' face crumple that she must have crossed a line. She later explains why she used that term, and Beezus admits to her in turn that she got upset because of how sensitive she's been about an acne problem of late. The two sisters thus apologize to each other for their argument.

* AnAesop: ''Beezus and Ramona'' has the message that it's okay to be sometimes fed up with your sibling, because siblings don't always get along.

* NearAndDearBabyNaming: Beezus is named after her maternal aunt, Beatrice, who she also admires and wants to be like when she is older.

* HaveAGayOldTime: "With grey thread, Beezus carefully outlined the steam coming from the teakettle's spout and thought about her pretty young aunt, who was always so gay and understanding." from ''Beezus and Ramona''. Although this was published in the mid-50s, gay as in "homosexual" and not "happy" started to catch on during that time.

* HappyEndingOverride: A slight example regarding Mr. Quimby's ongoing job hunts. At the end of ''Ramona and Her Father'', after four months of JoblessParentDrama, the family is ecstatic because Mr. Quimby has a new job as a cashier in a supermarket. But the next book, ''Ramona and Her Mother'', reveals that he hates the job, and in the end he quits it so he can go back to college to achieve his real dream of becoming a children's art teacher. But that RayOfHopeEnding is also overridden in ''Ramona Forever'': the only teaching job offer he gets is in a rural one-room schoolhouse far away, and with a new baby coming he can't afford to wait for others, so he resigns himself to working as a supermarket manager, which at least is a better job than a cashier.

* AdaptationalDyeJob: Ramona's hair is described as brown, and all four of the books' illustrators – Louis Darling, Alan Tiegreen, Tracy Dockray, and Jaqueline Rogers – have depicted it as a dark chocolate brown. In the 1980s TV series, Creator/SarahPolley's hair is more of a light golden brown or dirty blonde. (Which, admittedly, is also how Joanne Scribner portrayed Ramona's hair in her cover illustrations from the '70s and '80s). Willa Jean is also a redhead in the series instead of the blonde she is in the books.

* AdaptationalDyeJob: Ramona's hair is described as brown, and all four of the books' illustrators – Louis Darling, Alan Tiegreen, Tracy Dockray, and Jaqueline Rogers – have depicted it as a dark chocolate brown. In the 1980s TV series, Creator/SarahPolley's hair is more of a dirty blonde. (Which, admittedly, is also how Joanne Scribner portrayed Ramona in her cover illustrations from the '70s and '80s). Willa Jean is also a redhead in the series instead of the blonde she is in the books.

The first two books in the series were illustrated, as were most of Cleary's books in the 1950s and 1960s, by Louis Darling. After Darling's death in 1970, Alan Tiegreen took over as illustrator through 1984's ''Ramona Forever'' and also drew the cover art for ''Ramona's World''. Later editions of the first two books also featured new cover art by Tiegreen.

* AdaptationalDyeJob: Ramona's hair is described as brown, and all three of the book's illustrators – Louis Darling, Alan Tiegreen, and Tracy Dockray – have depicted it as a dark chocolate brown. In the 1980s TV series, Creator/SarahPolley's hair is more of a dirty blonde. Willa Jean is also a redhead in the series instead of the blonde she is in the books.

* BoyishShortHair: All three series illustrators, Louis Darling, Alan Tiegreen, and Tracy Dockray, depict Ramona with short brown hair that fits her tomboyish nature.

** Howie is introduced in ''Beezus and Ramona'' as a boy who frequently quarrels with Ramona, and from Ramona's perspective in ''Ramona the Pest'', they're not really friends by choice, but have to tolerate each other because their mothers are friends. But in first grade they bond over Howie's game of "brick factory," and they become genuine [[PlatonicLifePartners best friends]] from that point on.

* TheScapegoat: Part of Ramona's dislike for Willa Jean comes from the fact that no matter what kind of bratty things Willa Jean does, Mrs. Kemp always blames Ramona for them because she's older and "should have stopped her".

** In ''Ramona Quimby, Age 8'', it is stated that Ramona and her fellow third graders are the oldest kids at her new school. However, in ''Ramona's World'' she enters fourth grade at the same school. It's also explicitly stated that Ramona's teacher, Mrs. Meachem, has been teaching fourth grade there since some of the kids' ''parents'' were students there (ruling out the possibility that the school just added a grade over the summer).

** In ''Ramona the Pest'', Susan's hair color is described as "reddish-brown" while in ''Ramona's World'', it's described as blonde.
** In ''Ramona the Pest'', Howie's mother mentions taking his older sister's temperature, while in later books, Howie clearly doesn't have an older sister.

** A lesser example: The famous moment from ''Ramona Quimby, Age 8'' when Ramona cracks a raw egg on her head. In the book, Romona is pretty embarrassed and devastated over the incident. However, [[https://www.abebooks.com/9780439148078/Ramona-Quimby-Age-8-Beverly-0439148073/plp this reprint cover]] depicts her with a more passive "Well, that's life" expression.