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I really enjoyed her books when I was a kid. I'm male but I really loved the Ramona and Beezus books. The male version (Henry Huggins?) was no where near as fun
by ping_pong 6y ago
I really enjoyed her books when I was a kid. I'm male but I really loved the Ramona and Beezus books. The male version (Henry Huggins?) was no where near as fun as Ramona and Beezus books. Those books, Judy Blume books, Roald Dahl books (Danny, Champion of the World) and C.S. Lewis books formed the basis of most of my reading for a few good years.
- tfandango 6y agoThe first chapter-book I remember reading was one of the Ralph S. Mouse books, Motorcycle Mouse. I have fond memories of those times and I have since read them to my kids.
- ip26 6y agoI looked forward to reading those books to my future kids for many years. Then as I read the first one to my son, I saw the gleam in his eye, remembered why I quit riding, and tucked the book away for good.
- 1123581321 6y agoDid you ever read Otis Spofford? Quite a different character than Henry, closer to Ramona in being misunderstood, picked on and lashing out in turn. Pairs well with Ellen Tebbits, similar to Beezus’ perspective in that Otis annoys her but she has her own problems with friendships. In general I think it’s a misunderstanding to see her boy characters as only intended to he understood and appreciated by boys; same for the girls.
- pmiller2 6y agoMan, you're taking me right back to 4th grade. Well, at least the good parts, anyway.
- bachmeier 6y agoI really liked Henry Huggins. It was easier to relate to him than to a girl, though I enjoyed Ramona Quimby stories too. I think it was a story about Henry and night crawlers that got me thinking about how to start my own business. I failed (I lived on a farm in a sparsely populated part of the world) but I spent days, maybe weeks, trying to come up with ways to make money.
- cortesoft 6y agoWere the Ramona books supposed to be for girls only? I loved them as a kid, too, never thought of them as girl books.
- thenewwazoo 6y agoI truly don’t mean this to be provocative. The Ramona books weren’t “books for girls” per se, but the default perspective in literature, especially kids’ lit in that era, is male. That it’s a book which appeals to everyone, but is written from a girl’s perspective, causes male readers to wonder if it’s “for” them.
- cortesoft 6y agoI got so much of my reading material as a kid from my older sister, which is probably why I never thought of books being gendered as a kid.