Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary, 1975, 1977.

It’s September, and second-grader Ramona Quimby is already making out her Christmas list. However, Christmas this year might not be what Ramona expects. Her father comes home and explains that he’s been laid off from his job because a larger company bought the company he worked for and laid off the extra workers. Mrs. Quimby has a part time job, but it doesn’t pay much. Everyone in the Quimby family soon becomes worried about money.

Mrs. Quimby finds another job that’s full time, but Mr. Quimby still struggles to find work. Ramona doesn’t like to see her father so worried and stressed, and she tries to think of some way she could also earn money. When her father comments about how much money a boy on a television advertisement must have made, Ramona sets herself to memorizing various advertising phrases and repeating them, hoping to be discovered and hired to make an ad herself. Unfortunately, things that people say on ads don’t work in real-world settings, especially when you tell your teacher that her wrinkled stockings look like elephant skin.

The family has to eat food that they don’t particularly like in order to save money, and they start buying cheaper cat food for their cat. Picky-picky refuses to eat the cheap cat food, and before Halloween, he eats part of the girls’ jack o’lantern in desperation. Beezus, upset at the idea that their cat is apparently starving and desperate, angrily asks her father why they can’t afford Picky-picky’s usual cat food when they seem to have enough money for his cigarettes. (It’s a valid question. During my first semester of college, I totaled up a classmate’s expenses on cigarettes and realized that what she spent on them for a year was about the same as full-time student tuition at our community college, by early 2000s standards.) Her father tells her that’s none of her business, and Beezus retorts that it is her business. Cigarettes are harmful, and Mr. Quimby is spending money on them that the family desperately needs.

Ramona is worried because this is the first time that she’s heard that cigarettes are bad, although Beezus says that she learned it in school. Ramona tries to ask her father if what Beezus said is true, and he just says that he expects to be an old man someday, the kind that tells reporters on his hundredth birthday that he owes his longevity to cigarettes and whisky. This joke doesn’t reassure Ramona. Ramona decides that she’s going to get her father to stop smoking.

Ramona gets Beezus to help her make anti-smoking signs. At first, their father tries to ignore the signs, and then he starts getting annoyed with them. Ramona worries that she’s been mean to her father and upset him too much, but he later admits that she was right and that he’s going to try to quit smoking. Ramona takes him at his word and throws his cigarettes away, although he said that he would rather have cut down gradually. Still, his wife and daughters are happy about him quitting. For awhile, Mr. Quimby is edgy and irritable as he tries to get used to not smoking as well as still looking for a job.

As Christmas approaches, the girls’ Sunday school begins preparing to put on a Nativity play. Beezus gets cast as Mary, which pleases her because Henry Huggins is going to play Joseph. Ramona is so excited about the play that she wants a creative role for herself, and after the shepherds are cast, she says that she wants to be a sheep to go with the shepherds. The Sunday school teacher says that sounds like a good idea, but they’ve never had any sheep in the play before and don’t have a costume for her. Ramona says that her mother could make her one, and other children also say they want to be sheep.

However, as Beezus points out, now that their mother is working full time, she doesn’t really have time to sew a costume. Their mother also says that they can’t afford to buy new cloth for a costume, and the best she can do is an old white bathrobe that she might be able to alter into costume. Ramona’s father snaps at her that she’s been inconsiderate for expecting her to do something like this without asking first. Ramona feels badly and overhears her father calling her a spoiled brat. With his irritability, he’s been picking at her for various things, and one day, Ramona argues with him when she comes home from school and smells cigarette smoke.

Ramona’s father reassures her that he hasn’t purchased any new cigarettes. He just found an old one in a pocket that he forgot that he had and decided to smoke it to see if it would help him feel better. The two of them have a heart-to-heart talk about Ramona worrying about why they can’t be a happy family. Ramona’s father tells her that their family is happy. It’s just that no family is perfect and nobody’s life is perfect, and everyone goes through hard times now and then. The people in Ramona’s family still love each other and do their best for each other even when things are hard and they don’t always get along.

Things improve for the Quimbys as Christmas approaches. Mr. Quimby finally finds a new job. Ramona almost backs out of the Nativity play because her mother didn’t have time to make her a full costume, and she feels silly with what she’s wearing, but she changes her mind with the help of three older girls who were recruited to replace the Three Wise Men who backed out of the play.

One thing that kind of surprised me in the story was that Ramona’s parents seemed mildly scandalized when Ramona and Howie sang “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Beezus, who learned the song at summer camp and taught it to Ramona says that the neighbors will probably think they’re beer guzzlers after hearing Ramona and Howie sing it all up and down the street. It struck me as weird because I remember that everyone knew that song when I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, and nobody thought anything of it. I certainly never heard of anyone being scandalized by it. It’s just a silly counting song, and nobody really thought that any kid singing it had ever had beer. In fact, it was a common song for parents to get their kids to sing on long car trips because it takes a long time to finish, and during that time, the kids aren’t complaining or asking, “Are we there yet?”

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).