"Beatrice Quimby's biggest problem was her little sister Ramona."[4] Beatrice, called Beezus for short, is a serious, responsible girl who wants to be good big sister. But sometimes it's just too hard. Four-year-old Ramona can be very exasperating. Sometimes she does silly things that embarrass Beezus, like walking to the library wearing Easter bunny ears and hopping like a rabbit—in September. Or getting their friend Henry Huggins' dog locked inside their bathroom when he comes over to play chequers with Beezus. Beezus also get exasperated because Ramona clearly has a better imagination. Beezus wants to impress her free-spirited art teacher, Miss Robbins, so one of her paintings will be tacked up in the middle of the room for everyone to enjoy. But when she's supposed to paint an imaginary animal, she has a terrible time coming up with an idea. All she can think of are ordinary ones like lions and giraffes. Then Ramona disrupts the class, and Beezus uses her wits to straighten things out, proving that she can be creative after all, in her own way.

"The little girl you'd most like to strangle is Miss Binney's problem now, from the first morning in kindergarten when Miss Binney tells Ramona to "sit here for the present" through the question of how Mike Mulligan goes to the bathroom while he's racing Mary Ann to the crucial test of authority. Ramona becomes a kindergarten dropout when she declares she can't stop, spends several miserable days at home missing dawnzer lee light and Show and Tell and seat work before Miss Binney sends her a message that's not a capitulation but means that she must like her. Ramona's fear of being anonymous behind the mask of "the baddest witchi n the world" is particularly telling. The conjunction of beely and basal emotion puts this on a par with the best in the series." (Novelist Review)