Stylistic Analyses Of Ramona And Her Father

Beverly Cleary (1916-) is one of the most popular and honored writers of contemporary American children’s fiction. She has created many memorable characters, but none more completely so than Ramona Quimby. Her Ramona series of books have delighted generations and struck deeply in the hearts of the readers. These Ramona books have been popular in America for almost half a century and earned Cleary the Newbery Honor twice. Ramona and Her Father, published in1975, was the first one to receive this award, telling about how Ramona tries her best to make a happy family when her father lost his job.The Introduction includes these points:brief introduction of Beverly Cleary and Ramona series, and literature review at home and abroad. Chapter One provides a glimpse of the background and development of children’s literature and an introduction of stylistic theories. Based on the theoretical framework of literary stylistics, Chapter Two concentrates on aspects of thematic aspects, imagery and illustration of this novel and children’s thinking process. Combined with linguistic stylistics, an overall analysis and interpretation of Ramona and Her Father follows these three steps:Description—Interpretation—Evaluation from the perspectives of stylistic features on lexical and syntactical levels in Chapter Three. In conclusion, the literary value of this book and Cleary’s legacy for children’s literature are reviewed, with the hope that more and more scholars would pay more attention to the development of children’s literature.