Next up in my 52 Book Challenge, I had to read a book by Beverly Cleary for my MasterClass homework. I didn’t even know who Beverly Cleary was until I looked her up on the library’s digital books to see what I could read. She’s the author of the Ramona series (kid’s books). This will be book #10 for the year.
The reading prompt for a Beverly Cleary book was to read her style and how she captures the young reader and immerses that reader in the role of the character. The character is a little mouse that longs for adventure when he finds a toy motorcycle that belongs to a young boy. Through their shared love of motorcycles, the boy and the mouse communicate with each other, forming a friendship based on respect for who they are; human and mouse.
This is my first book by Cleary, and while I understand how she took the character and made you look at the world through mouse eyes, I was not all that fond of her style. It might be because it was written back in the sixties, and the words didn’t flow all that well with me. Oddly for a children’s book, I had to look up the definition of a few words.
It was an okay story, but it did its job. I felt like a mouse on an adventure.