Beyond Ramona
It was Beverly Cleary’s 106th birthday the other day and I posted a pic of some of her most famous covers, Ramona skipping across them with that blunt cut and determined stride.
Ramona is iconic but I want to shine a gentle spotlight on Cleary’s YA work, before YA even really existed as a category. Her 1950’s teen girls were eager to experience life. Fifteen opens with 15-year-old Jane Purdy thinking: “Today I’m going to meet a boy…”And in Jean and Johnny: “Lately life has lacked interesting ups and downs…Little ups, little downs - how she wished she could replace them with big ups and downs that would make life exciting”.
My 1959 Seattle Public Library Discarded copy of Jean and Johnny.
The problems in Jean and Johnny are 60+ years old at this point - but eternal. Jean loves a teen idol and her Dad makes fun of her. Money is tight because University is coming up, and her Mailman Dad has to send a little every month to his Mother out East. The sisters make many of their own clothes and their Mother works at a fabric store to earn a little extra.
That tender gulf between teenager and parent, when parents try the old ways of relating to you, and you’ve changed. I see myself doing it with my teen daughter too, making a silly joke to paper over a problem she is having and missing the target completely. The parents are not Charlie Brown adults talking nonsense in Cleary’s books, the characters are not convenient orphans who can depart on heroic quests without asking permission, they are there, trying their best: to get a new job, quit smoking, help their kid get over heartbreak, just as we do.
And the fallibility of the boys: Johnny doesn’t come over when he says he will, he doesn’t ask in advance for a date and when he shows up at 9:45 am to take her to the Drive-In, it’s to listen to his radio program in the car. Any girl who has sat through her boyfriend’s band practice can relate.
Jean makes a reason to call him, the evergreen “Did I leave my sweater in your car?” move, and analyzes every word, intonation and how they signed off. Maybe today’s version is dissecting every syllable and emoji of a text, but the feeling is the same.
Eventually Jean realizes that she is worth more than how Johnny has treated her and in a slim dress with a brown and apricot sash and linen pumps dyed to match (Jean and Johnny is full of swoony clothes, sewing, and textile details; even on her date with Homer she notes the fabric shade in his kitchen and files it away to share with her Mom) manages to take a crushing situation and turn it around. The themes of girls' self-esteem, building confidence, and loyalty to friends playing out on shows like Never Have I Ever now, were found first in Cleary’s book of 1959.
A note on the illustrations
The original illustrations were done by husband and wife duo Joe and Beth Krush, who illustrated the All of a Kind Family series, The Borrowers series and so many more iconic titles. A nice remembrance of Joe Krush here (he died in 2022, Beth in 2009) and a film bio about his work here.
