Ramona the Pest

Ramona is obsessed with her classmate Susan’s reddish, curly hair. In fact, Ramona seems unable to control herself whenever she catches sight of Susan’s hair. In Chapter 1 Ramona first notices her hair:

Susan’s hair looked like the hair on the girls in the pictures of the old-fashioned stories Beezus like to read. It was reddish-brown and hung in curls like springs that touched her shoulders and bounced as she walked (12).

Later in Chapter 1, Ramona first pulls on Susan’s hair—what Ramona refers to as “boing-ing” Susan’s hair, as she watches the curl spring up and down. During the Halloween parade in Chapter 6, Ramona feels emboldened by her mask and anonymity to tug on Susan’s hair once again. Finally, in Chapter 7, Ramona pulls Susan’s hair again, but this time, Miss Binney ejects Ramona from the classroom for doing so. When Miss Binney asks Ramona if she can stop pulling Susan’s hair, Ramona considers:

Could she really stop pulling Susan’s curls? She thought about those thick, springy locks that were so tempting. She thought about Susan, who always acted big. In kindergarten there was no worse crime than acting big. In the eyes of the children, acting big was worse than being a pest (176).