We’ve almost read all the Beverly Cleary books together

3.5 stars

So far, this is my least favorite Beverly Cleary book. Otis is obnoxious and a trouble maker. It's not as if trouble finds him, he knowingly causes trouble and tries his hardest to irritate everyone. I was turned off by that behavior. Perhaps I am judging this too harshly because I just adore the Henry Huggins series and I'm definitely comparing the two.

Ok, this was the most uninteresting book I've ever read from Miss Cleary.
The reason mightn't be not being the right audience in terms of age and gender- I loved the Henry Huggins series.

We loved Otis and his antics.

Cute but I never need to read the phrase "stir up a little excitement" ever again.

'There was nothing better Otis Spofford liked better than stirring up a little excitement.' So starts 'Otis Spofford.' Otis Spofford is an only and fatherless child who lives with his distracted working mother in a small apartment. Otis Spofford, playing cowboys and Indians (one of several anachronisms in 'Otis Spofford,' such as kids using the word 'keen') 'scalps' a classmate obsessed with growing her hair longer by cutting off a hunk of that hair. Otis Spofford meets the 'comeuppance' promised by his fourth grade teacher when the classmate extracts revenge. Otis Spofford--Beverly Cleary's antihero?

I loved the book Otis Spofford By beverly Cleary because it was super funny.I would recomend this book for trouble makers because that´s what Otis is a big trouble maker.I chose this book because it was my moms favorite book when she was young.I guess the apple dosent land far frome the tree thats why i love this book.

2021 reads, #15. Stop everything! BEVERLY CLEARY HAS DIED! Like millions of others, Cleary is one of the authors I used to regularly read back in my childhood in the 1970s; and I've been meaning to do a middle-aged reassessment of her work, much like I did with Judy Blume in 2019, so her unfortunate passing seemed as good a day as any to jump on the Chicago Public Library website and check out eight of her ebooks before everyone else could come around to the idea of doing so themselves.

With her first book, 1950's Henry Huggins, becoming such an immediate and massive success, we came close to living in an alternative history where Cleary's career was similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in that three of the five next books she wrote after that one actually starred one of Henry's neighbors there on Klickitat Street in good ol' pre-hipster Portland, Oregon. That's where we get today's 1953 novel, featuring a boy the same age as Henry, who attends the same school, and who generally behaves the same, although in his case living in an apartment building with a single mother instead of a nuclear-family ranch home down the street like Henry. Other than that, though, the adventures generally proceed in the same fashion: school events are first organized then disrupted, the kids of Klickitat Street mercilessly tease each other, boring Saturday mornings eventually lead to chaos-filled Saturday afternoons, and all the other good-natured rascally adventures you expect from 1950s children's literature. (It's worth noting that the infamously saccharine TV show Leave it to Beaver debuted just four years after this book, largely taking its characterization cues off Cleary's novels; and indeed, Cleary herself was actually hired by the ABC television network to write three Beaver novelizations based off specific episodes, whose few modern readers here at Goodreads tend to agree pale in comparison to the Klickitat tales that ironically inspired the TV episodes that inspired the Cleary adaptations.)

Of course, we all now know what happened to the aborted attempt at a Klickitat Street Extended Universe; namely, once Cleary published what would eventually be the last of them, 1955's Beezus and Ramona, against everyone's expectations it was the bratty four-year-old Ramona Quimby who became the universe's huge Fonzie/Kramer breakout star, inspiring Cleary to largely drop all the other characters and instead write another seven books starring just her (including the last book Cleary would ever write, 1999's Ramona's World, published almost exactly 50 years after her first book). That's generally for the best, because these other Klickitat books largely read like one giant interchangeable story; but books like this one and the immediately preceding Ellen Tebbits give us a glance at an alternative career for Cleary that was to never actually be.

The 2021 Beverly Cleary Memorial Re-Read:
n  Henry Hugginsn (1950)
n  Henry and Beezusn (1952)
n  Otis Spoffordn (1953)
n  Henry and Ribsyn (1954)
n  Fifteenn (1956)
n  Henry and the Paper Routen (1957)
n  Henry and the Clubhousen (1962)
n  Ribsyn (1964)
n  Ramona and Her Mothern (1979)
n  Dear Mr. Henshawn (1983)
n  Ramona Forevern (1984)
n  Stridern (1991)

This is probably my least favorite book by Beverly Cleary that I’ve read. Otis is such a naughty kid, and the adults in his life seem mostly not to know how to help him.

Pretty good, though a bit cringe-worthy at parts, especially the "scalping" and Indian talk - yikes.

I read Otis Spofford as I like to read and recommend books to share with my young niblings (nieces and nephews). This book was published in 1953. For the record, I haven't read a Beverly Cleary book in 45+ years.

Otis the story was just okay. The story is cute and the kid is a bit of an over-the-top version boys I recognize from when I was young.

What struck me the most about the book was how much being a kid has changed. The kids in "Otis Spofford" walk to and from school by themselves or with a friend. They play outside without adult supervision. They make mischief. They live lives of seemingly much more independence than anything I've observed amongst the children I spend time with.

For that reason, it might be interesting to share this book with my young niblings. It might spur interesting conversations about the "olden days" as they like to call them.