Beverly Cleary Author Study: Sister of the Bride

No illustrations because this is a young adult book. This novel has less of a "first love" plot than the previous three.

Barbara finds out that her sister Rosemary is getting married after her first year of college. Barbara gets swept up in planning her sister's wedding since Rosemary doesn't seem to care much about it. There are some issues with Barbara wondering who her wedding date will be, which groomsmen might be single, and which neighborhood boy she might marry when she's her sister's age. But these crushes aren't really explored like Cleary did in previous books, so the focus is mostly on wedding preparation.

That wedding spotlight made this book a bit lackluster for me because it felt very surface-level, and I didn't relate much to any character. That being said, it was an interesting read just to learn about the wedding and shower traditions back then compared to how they are now.

Beverly Cleary Author Study: Henry and the Clubhouse

Illustrations by Louis Darling, though my copy

has a revised cover by JoAnn Scribner.

Henry finally got his paper route in the last book, but now he feels the pressure of selling subscriptions. He's waiting for someone to move into the empty house in his neighborhood so he'll have a new customer. In the meantime, he and his friends build their own clubhouse.

Ramona is very prevalent in this book, and she's quite the character. (She won't have her first solo book for six more years.) Henry is growing up though, so his interactions with Ramona are more brotherly than kids bugging each other, as it was in the earlier books. The ending of this book has a very touching scene between the two of them.