I don’t usually reread books. But this time, the Ramona Quimby series is the only place where my mind has settled, where I’ve sat long enough to read through to the end of a story.
I had read The Magician’s Nephew (C. S. Lewis) and The Happiness Project (Gretchen Rubin). Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton) was next. After about twenty pages I kept putting it down. Forty pages in and I put it down for the final time. For several weeks, I didn’t pick up a book again. This was reading in the time of COVID-19. Passive entertainment like TV or food related videos was the only thing I could sit through.
Eventually, I tried again. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland was the only book of hers I hadn’t read. Again, I wanted to keep reading but I was distracted and restless. I felt guilty for wasting my time away on TV. This time a reality show the name of which shall not be named. Weeks went by again without me picking up another book. I missed reading but dreaded the idea of failing at it again.
One evening I was looking at my laptop, not really wanting to turn it on, but also feeling moments away from another wasted hour. Then my eyes fell on the Ramona books on the shelf. I leafed through Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Forever, a musty, yellowed copy with crinkly pages. And those illustrations. I’m partial to the Alan Tiegreen ones. I loved those illustrations as a kid.
I read the book, happy to finally have read something from start to finish.
Then I read Ramona the Pest.
And then I realized something reading these books as an adult. I didn’t just love these books because of the illustrations or the funny things that happened in the stories. I loved them because I had felt like Ramona. There’s the time Ramona burst out crying at the dinner table. The time she calls her sister a mean name only to be confused at why she felt so odd and uncomfortable. The time she felt sorry for herself, hiding behind the trash cans because her teacher had been replaced by a substitute and of course that meant the world had ended.
As a kid, I once got told off for not coming home on time after seeing a friend. There was a flower patch next to the apartment’s balcony with hibiscus and other flowers. I sat there, hidden from view, and felt sorry for myself. Everyone was looking for me. I heard them out in the balcony calling my name. I sat there, just like Ramona, certain all was terrible in the world and didn’t answer. Beverly Cleary was a genius at expressing how I felt. Before this, I had never been fully aware of why I loved the books so much.
Since rereading these books I seem to have been cured of my inability to stick to a book. I found a copy of Christopher Paolini’s Eragon in the library’s free book box. It’s a book I had been wanting to read for a while. I read the first five pages. Then a chapter. Then another one. So far so good.
Mariam Sultan 