Ramona’s parents don’t hide the truth from their daughter. Neither should we.
, the last in the series, came out in 1999, the year after I graduated from college. The Quimbys live in a working-class Portland, Oregon, neighborhood in an indeterminate decade. Ramona and her sister, Beezus, have a degree of privilege—a house and yard, library cards, reasonably good schools, and a neighborhood safe enough to walk, by themselves, just about everywhere. But they aren’t rich, or even comfortable by today’s standards.
Mrs. Quimby says this not to be harsh or dismissive, but to invite Ramona into a more mature, empathetic point of view—the point of view that her parents share, that allows them to compromise their dreams without losing their identities. Similarly, in the, the protagonist is gradually allowed to see how the world around her is more complicated than the well-fed, laughing, comfortable life she knows inside her family’s compound.
I discovered the Anna Hibiscus series, published long after my own childhood, through a librarian friend who never fails in her recommendations. Like Cleary, Atinuke is beautifully attentive to the point of view of children, as well as the pain of growing older. But when I enthused about the books to the mother of one of Beatrice’s classmates last year, she told me that she wished the books had come with a content warning.
Facing weeks or months of self-isolation, I’m grateful for the things my family has not had to sacrifice—we have our own enchanted forest to roam, plenty of food, a house to live in, books to read. Movies to watch! But kids who were looking forward to birthday parties, swimming pools, playgrounds, and the normalcy of everyday life—the happy routine of just going to school—are learning unasked-for lessons in sacrifice these days, and it’s early.
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