Emily's Runaway Imagination is a book published in 1961 by Beverly Cleary about a young girl growing up on a farm. As the title suggests, she has a crazy imagination. The main plot revolves around her wishing for a library in the little town of Pitchfork, Oregon followed by the approval and setting up of said library. In between fundraising tea parties and collecting book donations, Emily manages to get herself into quite a few interesting predicaments.
This work contains examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: Fong Quock, due to his speech impediment, calls Prince the dog "Plince", which becomes his nickname.
- Arcadia: Pitchfork is a very peaceful small country town and the adults mostly see it this way and are happy about it. Emily, not so much.
- Artistic License – Animal Care: In an effort to clean up the family's plow horse into a "snow-white steed," Emily bathes the horse with Clorox bleach, including soaking the horse's tail in a bucket of bleach solution. Needless to say, this is not how you should bathe any animal; while a mild enough bleach solution might not do any long-term damage, if nothing else a soak in Clorox solution would not do the condition of the horse's tail any favors.
- Asian Speekee Engrish: Fong Quock has the stereotypical "L = R" speech impediment and is Chinese, which leads to embarrassment for Emily in the first chapter. He also puts "ee" on the end of words, and speaks in primitive grammar.Fong: "Him name Plince?"
- Broke Episode: Or rather, broke arc— in one arc, the village goes through "hard times", i.e. a shortage of money, and has a party where they dress in rags to deal with it.
- Clothes for Christmas Cringe: During the arc about the town suffering from "hard times", Emily's parents can't afford much in terms of Christmas presents. As a result, they give her Wellington boots, which disappoint her, since she dislikes "practical" Christmas presents.
- Curly Hair Is Ugly: Inverted — all the straight-haired girls in town are jealous of Arlene Twitchell and her beautiful, naturally curly hair.
- Dude Magnet: Arlene is admired by all the boys in town because she's so pretty.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Emily makes the embarrassing faux pas of trying to correct Fong, whose heavy accent means he pronounces the name of her dog Prince as "Plince." This leads everyone in town, including Emily's parents, to start calling the dog Plince. Plince himself doesn't seem to mind, but Emily is mortified.
- Easily Embarrassed Youngster: Emily finds the idea of wearing old ragged clothes to a hard-times party to be just awful.
- Everytown, America: Like most of Beverly Cleary's books it takes place in Oregon. Unlike most of the others though, Pitchfork is a fictional town, albeit the kind of small town that was very common back in the 60s.
- Failed Attempt at Scaring: Subverted. Emily tells her cousin June that her (Emily's) house is haunted during a sleepover, and initially June doesn't buy it, but eventually both girls become scared when they hear scary noises and are convinced the house really is haunted.
- Fashion Hurts: Emily's yellow organdy dress is scratchy and a bit painful to wear. Later, her red party dress turns out to be too small when she puts it on.
- G-Rated Drug: Emily feeding the hogs rotten apples, which have fermented and become alcoholic.
- Gone Horribly Right: Emily hears that you can make your pie pastry lighter by adding a pinch of baking powder. So she adds a pinch to the crust she's making for her custard pie - and then another couple of pinches just to be careful - and her pie crust is so light that it floats to the top of the pie when she cooks it. Disaster is ultimately averted, however: the pie turns out delicious, though, and Emily tells the crowd at the potluck dinner that she's invented "upside down pie".
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Emily's father is a lot bigger than her mother.
- Insomnia Episode: In one chapter, June sleeps over, but the two can't sleep when they start to believe the house is haunted.
- Japanese Ranguage: Fong Quock is actually Chinese, but he still pronounces his "R"s as "L"s. Emily's mother sympathizes, saying that when she was learning German in school, she could never learn to pronounce "r" the right way.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Pete Ginty, who has no qualms about teasing the hell out of little girls (and he believes all women are neat freaks), but also holds up the heavy pail of bleach solution to soak a horse's tail in for her.
- Lack of Imagination: This book has June Barlett, Emily's cousin. While her imagination is indeed capable of "running away" (as shown when she becomes convinced that Emily's house is haunted along with Emily), most of the time she finds it very hard to imagine things, especially unrealistic things. Emily describes her as having "an imagination like a plow horse".
- A Lesson Learned Too Well: Mrs. Barlette tells Emily not to waste food because "think of the starving Armenians!". When Emily needs to get rid of rotten apples, she thinks it would be wasteful to throw them away, so she feeds them to the pigs, who then get drunk.
- Miss Imagination: Emily, as the title suggests, has an imagination that "runs away" with her— for instance, she thinks Fong Quock is going to take her to China with him in the last chapter.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Emily enjoys spooky stories (one of her favorites from a book of poems is "The Raven") and tries to convince June to pretend the house is haunted with her when she sleeps over.
- Not So Above It All: While June's imagination hardly ever runs away, she does get caught up thinking the house is haunted when she sleeps over with Emily.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Pitchfork, Oregon is a very small country town where everybody knows each other and even the few 'exciting' things that happen wouldn't be exciting in a place where actual things happened. Part of the reason Emily developed her imagination is because Pitchfork can be so dull.
- Odd Couple: A mild case with Emily and her cousin June. June's usually very calm and rational and likes to do just about everything the exact opposite way Emily does.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Emily bemoans this as the consequence of living in such a close-knit farm town - since everyone knows everyone and not much happens, nobody ever lives anything down.
- Pauper Patches: Invoked, when Emily's mother is making a hard-times costume and sews colorful patches on Daddy's oldest pair of overalls.
- Spoiled Brat: Arlene Twitchell is outright described as spoiled by Emily; she gets given luxury clothes and food and is a bit snobby. However, we never see her act particularly rude or mean.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Emily wears a party dress and her mother's high heels to the hard-times party (where everyone is supposed to wear old and ragged things), and is embarrassed because it doesn't look like she's wearing a hard-times costume. But when it turns out the dress is too small for her and the heels are too big, everyone assumes that she was trying to look silly like the rest of the crowd, which is fine with her.
