In Ramona the Pest, Ramona’s story highlights the challenges, the pleasures, and the surprises that children experience during early childhood. Ramona’s story is meant to give children the sense that they are not alone in their experiences, while also telling the story of one particularly spunky little girl.

Ramona is excited to grow up. As the youngest of the family, Ramona has felt one step behind Beezus her entire life. One of Ramona’s biggest behavior motivators is not looking like a baby. Participating in babyish activities would indicate that Ramona is a baby herself, which would put her further from her goal of growing up. At multiple points in the book, Ramona criticizes her peers for baby-like behavior. For example, when Howie looks like he is about to cry after someone catches him in the game Gray Duck, Ramona thinks he is being silly: “Only a baby would cry in the mush pot” (25). Avoiding looking like a baby also guides Ramona’s own behavior, as in Chapter 4, when she decides that running away from kindergarten is only something that babies would do.

In this story, we see Ramona reach several important early childhood milestones: She attends her first day of kindergarten, she rides a 2-wheeler bike for the first time, she learns to write her name, and she loses her first tooth.