Beverly Cleary is well-known for writing humorous and touching realistic chapter books. Her realistic and sympathetic characters have been indelibly written on many hearts. One of my favorite character creations of hers is Ellen Tebbits, an eight-year-old girl whose life is brightened by her friendship with newcomer Austine. The book Ellen Tebbits forever shaped my life.Partly because of Ellen, during much of my childhood, I wanted a best friend. I identified with Ellen, who does not have any brothers or sisters. When the girl next door moves away, Ellen also ends up without any close friends. Sure, Ellen has lots of school friends, but she doesn’t have anyone who lives in the same neighborhood who can come over to play after school and on the weekends. Now at first, Ellen thinks perhaps she does not even want a best friend. After all, best friends share secrets. And Ellen has one she wants to keep. Once Ellen discovers that she and Austine share the same secret, however, Ellen is glad to have a best friend. Immediately, the girls begin to hang out together at one another’s homes, playing dress up and baking cookies. And, in my childhood days, I coveted their friendship. Thankfully, over the years, best friends have come along with whom I was able to confide my deepest desires and fears. Those friends I also shared memorable moments with, the same as Ellen and Austine who together share an adventure of trying to bring a mammoth old beet to school to impress a teacher, riding on horses for the first time without any adult supervision, and being in an almost disastrous school play together.The back jacket flap lists various episodes which happen to the girls and suggests readers will debate which is the funniest. I don’t have an answer to that debate but, for me, the chapter which I'll remember forever is the one which describes how the two girls decide to dress up as twins. When I met my best friend of eighth grade, a missionary’s kid on furlough, I echoed Ellen’s idea to her about being twins. I don’t remember anymore what, if anything, was the result of that inspiration. I do know though that in hindsight I’ve found it ironic that I should wish for my best friend and I to dress up as twins, given how the situation transpired for Ellen and Austine. The moms of the two girls possess very different sewing abilities, which means Ellen and Austine end up with totally different looking dresses. The most trying part is that Ellen's dress has a sash; Austine's dress does not. Hence, the so-called matching dresses become anything but fun to wear, and even causes a bitter quarrel. This negative outcome never seemed to faze me. Instead I just kept thinking about how much the girls enjoyed picking out a dress pattern and then trying to match how they looked, right down to how they wore their hair.Ellen Tebbits has personal meaning to me. If I were to analyze it as a critic, however, the feature which I would most emphasize is how much Cleary knew children. Clearly worked as a librarian, meaning she encountered young people on a daily basis. This shines through in all of her books, with Ellen Tibbets being no exception. When Ellen and Austine first meet, they almost don't become friends. Austine understandably misses her home state of California so much that she talks non-stop about it. Ellen just as understandably acts irritated with Austine for her one-track mind and even snaps, "If you think California is so wonderful, why don't you go back there?" Even before the end of dance class, Ellen begins to have a guilty conscience. After all, she knows what it feels like to be lonely. She begins to wonder if Austine sometimes sits on her front porch and wishes for someone to play with. Or if Austine hopes in school that maybe someone will invite her over to play. And so Ellen makes up her mind to apologize. There are countless other incidents, wherein the girls show themselves both to be vulnerable to moods but also nice and likable characters.Beverly Cleary's books are part of personal collections of countless readers. Which Beverly Cleary book is your favorite? And why?
In the book Ellen Tebbits, Ellen is the main character. Her best friend had moved away to another country. But Ellen wasn't alone for long, she had met a NEW best friend, who she hanged out with all the time. After these girls were too bored of being together, they started quarreling with each other. Her friend had ripped her new stash because her friend thought that is was really cheap. SO then, the next day when Ellen and her friend had to clean the chalk board erasers, Ellen smacked her friend right across the face. Ellen quickly apologized because her friend was going to cry, and her friend also apologized too. The next day, they were back to being Best Friends, like before.I can connect this to myself because when I was in 4th grade, I got into an argument with my friend. At first we were play fighting, but then my friend actually smacked me. I smacked her right back and told her that it hurt. Then, we started fighting and arguing and yelling at each other. Just like Ellen and her friends, we came back to being friends, and even today, we are now BFFLS!!!I gave this book a five star, because Ellen seemed just like me, when I was younger. This book can be related to any kid in the world, that is having difficulties with their friends. This book was really good, I liked it.
What do You think about Ellen Tebbits (2008)?
The only reason I give this book two stars instead of one is because I think Ellen Tebbits is a fun read for children, but the storyline seems a bit pointless. Ellen meets Austine, a new girl from California, at ballet class one day. The two girls become the best of friends right away; they were inseparable. A quarrel breaks out between Ellen and Austine one day at school, and they stop being friends. But, to their dismay, the fight was just a misunderstanding and they become friends once again. As you can see, the book is pretty much: two girls become friends, get in a fight and stop being friends, then go back to being friends again. Granted, this is an extremely common occurrence among children, especially girls, but I just don't see it as being very interesting. Nonetheless, Ellen Tibbets is a book that can teach a lesson in friendship. Ellen and Austine get into a fight that temporarily ends their friendship after Ellen makes assumptions about an event that occurred, and children may learn that in order to have and keep a friendship they must communicate with each other effectively.
—Melissa Morton
I have clear memories of reading this book as a child! But interestingly, reading it as an adult, it mostly just struck me as old-fashioned. Even though it's set in about the same time period as the Ramona and Henry Huggins books, it just seemed out of date, while the Ramona and Henry Huggins series seem timeless. Many of the anecdotes take place within classrooms, and I was so surprised to find myself feeling that the classroom dynamics were inappropriate, even though they reminded me of just what my own elementary school days were like. For example, rather than assigning and rotating job duties fairly among all students - which is the norm in today's classrooms - the teachers simply handpicked students to do special jobs, making the students who were never chosen feel as though the teacher didn't like them. There was another kind of childhood injustice depicted in the book that I think is still quite prevalent today. More than once, Ellen is called out for whispering in dance class, even though she is only trying to respond to Otis's bad behavior by asking him to stop. Ellen gets disciplined, but Otis does not. I remember feeling wronged as a child when I was disciplined for doing something bad while the other child who "started it" got away with their bad behavior. Like Ellen, I didn't dare speak up to defend myself, and even if I did, it would probably have been seen as talking back to the adult, or tattling on the other student. I know that both my kids have experienced this type of inequity already, and at the very least, I like that this book shows them that they are not the only ones who are sometimes treated unfairly due to a misunderstanding or an adult's incomplete view of a situation. Or, as in Ellen's case, perhaps a true bias, as the instigator, Otis, was the dance teacher's son! Anyway, I think Ellen and Austine's friendship was realistic, and on the one hand I think it's nice for children to read about all kinds of relationship dynamics, so they get to understand that a whole range of experiences - including fighting with friends - is normal. On the other hand, though, I really disliked the way Austine so quickly replaced Ellen, and what would become of Linda after Ellen and Austine made up? Still, I really liked that Ellen and Austine resolved everything between themselves, not just apologizing, but also fairly understanding the other person's point of view.
—Irene
Best friends Ellen and Austine meet at ballet class one day and immediately become best friends. Ellen finds herself sharing secrets with Austine that she never thought she would share with anyone. One day, a misunderstanding leads to them not being friends for a while, but after talking they become friends again. Ellen Tibbets is a book that can teach a lesson in friendship to all younger students. Ellen and Austine get into a fight that temporarily ends their friendship after Ellen makes assumptions about an event that occurred, and children may learn that in order to have and keep a friendship they must communicate with each other effectively. This would be a great book to introduce a lesson about communication. I personally was not very fond of this book because I thought that the story line was a bit bland, but younger students would like this story because it may be something they can relate too.
—Jacquelyn Hoogendyk
