Ramona Quimby hoped her parents would forget to give her a little talking-to. She did not want anything to spoil this exciting day.
This opening paragraph to the novel sets the stage for practically everything that is to follow. Ramona is beginning a new grade in school and much of what happens will be related to having a new teacher while a lot of the book is set in school. Ramona will also be coming into conflict with her parents as she begins to establish more independence with the maturity that always comes with starting a new grade in school. Her excitement at taking that next step is also going to be challenged from several fronts.
The Quimbys’ house seemed to have grown smaller during the day until it was no longer big enough to hold her family and all its problems.
This is a very effective piece of imagery because it conveys size as a metaphorical implication of the growth of the family. The house is clearly not actually getting smaller, but the problems that are arising from the aging of the Quimby children is serving to create problems that had not existed. The suggestion is that problems which lead to tension between family members take up actual space and thus reduce the amount of available space in a house. This is a symbolic representation of reality; just note the next time there is tension in your home how it suddenly seems harder to escape the presence of those with whom you having problems.
Ramona missed Howie, who had been assigned to another room, but wouldn’t you know? That yard ape, Danny, was sitting at a desk, still wearing his baseball cap and tossing Ramona’s new eraser from one hand to another.
Upon Ramona’s first entrance into her new classroom, a brief overview of some of the more obvious changes from previous years plays out before her. The situation is described as both exciting and confusing as some of the other students are recognized as old friends while others are described as total strangers. And then the real meat of the matter: a close friend won’t be with her this year, but a boy who has already irked her—and the first day of class hasn’t even started yet—will be. This observation becomes a kind of metaphorical foreshadowing for the emotional rollercoaster that moving up to the next grade in school will prove to be.
"Nobody is nice all the time. Or if they are, they are boring.”
One of the overriding themes of the book is pretty well encapsulated here. Ramona’s experience in the third grade opens her to a more sophisticated understanding of human nature. She is presented with events that reveal emotional responses are not static, but change according to circumstance. Both at school and at home, this awareness is gradual as she still clings to a view that people are always what they seem to be. The reality that nice people can at times behave not-so-nicely turns out to be one of the most important lessons she learns all year.
“A happy ending for today.”
Ramona’s final word of the book—in which she corrects an assertion made by her sister—reveals that the little girl who started out on the first day of third grade at the beginning has undergone a great deal of growth. Her awareness of the complexities of human nature is firmly established through this demonstration of a wisdom that defied even older sister Beezus.
