I recently wrote a not-so-kind review about Missing May and how it was unworthy of the Newberry‘s “Best in English Literature” award for 1992, opining that better publication undoubtedly exist! This is a completely different generation, I understand, but Emily’s Runaway Imagination (1961) is the kind of book I’m talking about.

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This book has everything—a happy family, animals, a running plot delivered through snippet-stories of this girl’s life on the farm during the Great Depression. It’s got race relations and financial crises, humor and pathos. And best of all, it’s got no agenda and no “life lessons” for adults through the eyes of a child.

If only this book hadn’t been up against The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare in 1962, it would have won. Well it should have at least got an honorable mention and thankfully Beverly Cleary finally did win with Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983).

Brief Summary of Emily’s Runaway Imagination

But enough about my disdain for the Newberry award! This book follows ten-year-old Emily Bartlett and her zany adventures on the farm outside Pitchfork, Oregon. Key to the book as a whole is Emily’s dream for Pitchfork to have its own library, where she could borrow Black Beauty and read it through three times straight.

Incidents occur throughout that both help and waylay this dream. Animals go loose during a tea party, Emily bleaches a horse, and she and her cousin spend one very scary night in bed with ghosts. There are also a series of town get-togethers that keep the book lively.

Mrs. Bartlett—a school teacher for Chicago and Emily’s mother—is just as committed to seeing this dream for a library come true, so she’s always finding ways to drum up interest and funding from the community. Fong Quock—the old Chinese man that Emily dislikes because he mispronounces her dog’s name—also plays a key role through the book, but particularly in the final chapter when Emily’s afraid he’s going to trade her for a monkey wrench and take her to China!

How My Kids Took It

We read this book as the final selection in this year’s Cousins’ Book Club, and I know my son (14) wasn’t initially as keen on it as my daughter (13). But the more I read aloud to them, the more my son laughed. There were times that he even told me to “pause” because he had to leave the room for one reason or another.

We enjoyed some real laugh-out-loud moments with this book, like this exchange from Chapter 3:

“Does Clorox really make the towels whiter?” Emily asked.

“Yes, it does.” Mama dumped in the towels and stirred them around with an old broom handle.

This was enough to inspire Emily. “Mama!” she exclaimed. “Is it all right if I Clorox a horse?”

That line broke us—but then I kept reading and couldn’t believe the response:

“Oh, Emily!” Mama laughed. “I don’t know any reason why you shouldn’t, but you’ll have to ask your father.” [Who later said] “Yes, Emily, I expect you can as long as you rinse the horse good.” (60)

The whole monkey-wrench scene of Chapter 9 was another that brought on some heaves of laughter. This was definitely a fun book to read aloud.

Two More Assets

I was very interested in Cleary’s description of “Decoration Day,” a holiday I’d never heard of in the States where folks in Pitchfork would clean and clear the cemetery plots of their pioneer ancestors as a way to honor and remember them. This is a common practice on the Asian island where we now live, an April holiday called “Tomb Sweeping Day.” I’ve always appreciated the sentiment here and think it’s holiday worth bringing back to life there in the States.

Beverly Cleary also intrigued my kids in Chapter 6 with her quotations of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.” Once this chapter was done and before bed, I just had to find it online and read it aloud to my kids—both of whom are memorizing classic poems this module in school. They loved its cadence, though they couldn’t understand its meaning, and I think in the coming years Poe might make it to our reading list as well.

We also thought that Black Beauty might make it to our Cousins’ Book Club list next years, until we heard Emily’s review of it in Chapter 9:

Emily read it three times, even though she did not think it was as good as Muriel said it was. It was a sad book, but that part was all right. Emily enjoyed reading sad things… It was the way the horses chatted about their aches and pains that bothered Emily. Horses in Pitchfork neighed, whinnied, or nickered. They did not have long visits with each other about their troubles. (196-197)

Conclusion

Although this final quotation might bely the fact that Emily’s imagination still had some running to do, we found this ten-year-old a pleasant companion in our reading this week. She’s a less-wacky Pippi Longstocking (1950) and reminiscent of the girl in Thimble Summer (1938).

Apparently we gravitate to such stories. As a dad who prefers fun, healthy, entertaining literature for my kids over the crap that librarians want them to read—yeah, I’m all for it.

©2025 E.T.