Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Ellen Tebbits
    Ellen Tebbits
    Ellen Tebbits
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    Ellen Tebbits

    By Beverly Cleary and Tracy Dockray

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Newbery Medal-winning author Beverly Cleary brings her warm humor to this funny story of a girl readers will recognize—and love.

    This funny realistic friendship story captures the intensity of kids' emotions and is the second book beloved author Beverly Cleary published.

    Ellen Tebbits has an embarrassing secret that she'll never share with anyone. That is, until she meets Austine—and discovers that Austine has the exact same secret! Soon the girls are best friends who do everything to­gether—attending dance class, riding horses, and dodging pesky Otis Spofford, the neighborhood troublemaker.

    But then Ellen does something terrible . . . and now Austine isn't speaking to her. Ellen desperately wants her best friend back. How can she show Austine how sorry she is?

    Ellen Tebbits is a funny school and friendship story that stands the test of time—perfect for independent reading for second and third graders.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061972164
    Author

    Beverly Cleary

    Beverly Cleary is one of America's most beloved authors. As a child, she struggled with reading and writing. But by third grade, after spending much time in her public library in Portland, Oregon, she found her skills had greatly improved. Before long, her school librarian was saying that she should write children's books when she grew up. Instead she became a librarian. When a young boy asked her, ""Where are the books about kids like us?"" she remembered her teacher's encouragement and was inspired to write the books she'd longed to read but couldn't find when she was younger. She based her funny stories on her own neighborhood experiences and the sort of children she knew. And so, the Klickitat Street gang was born! Mrs. Cleary's books have earned her many prestigious awards, including the American Library Association's Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, presented to her in recognition of her lasting contribution to children's literature. Dear Mr. Henshaw won the Newbery Medal, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Ramona and Her Father have been named Newbery Honor Books. Her characters, including Beezus and Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, and Ralph, the motorcycle-riding mouse, have delighted children for generations.

    Read more from Beverly Cleary

    Related to Ellen Tebbits

    Related ebooks

    Children's Social Themes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Totally EMBARRASSING

      Dec 20, 2020

      It all started in P.E, I found a soccer ball behind the school gate and so I started practising with it. Then my crush yelled out, “Pass it to me!” with the cutest smile on his face, so of course I was going to kick it to him. But when I tried, I tri

      2 min read

    • Article

      Totally EMBARRASSING

      Jun 24, 2020

      My grandparents were visiting my family’s house, and I needed to go to the toilet. I noticed the door was closed but I didn’t think anything of it. I opened it, turned towards the toilet and my nan was there! I said, “Uhhh…” and quickly stepped out,

      2 min read

    • Article

      Extra EMBARRASSING

      Apr 11, 2021

      Once, I was out on a farm and these goats came up behind me and started eating my pants. It was so embarrassing, I thought they were going to chew them off! Worst of all, my crush was there with me! OMTG! Frankie It was school picture day and I aske

      3 min read

    • Article

      Totally EMBARRASSING

      Jul 12, 2020

      I was playing a game with my older sister and I lost, so she got to dress me in any outfit of her choice that I had to wear on our daily walk. She made me wear my dressing gown, a floppy leopard print sun hat, and tiny pink sunglasses. I also had to

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hazel Down the Rabbit Hole

      May 1, 2020

      Hazel Down the Rabbit Hole
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dancing SHOES

      Oct 21, 2020

      Dancing SHOES
      6 min read

    • Article

      Just the THING

      May 18, 2022

      Just the THING
      3 min read

    • Article

      The heartbeat OF PARIS

      Apr 3, 2024

      The heartbeat OF PARIS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Failure to Thrive

      Dec 15, 2019

      Alice read John Mark’s letter, her eyes narrowed, as I paced our tiny apartment. The envelope contained instructions for retrieving two sets of human remains from the University of Florida. I sometimes worked for John Mark, the director of the Milwau

      20 min read

    • Article

      Open Short Story Winner Tight Situation

      Apr 4, 2024

      When Carol first wakes up, she thinks it must have been a dream. The ringing phone had been distant, muffled as if the landline device had been buried in a bag of something soft like cotton wool - the packing material stuffed so tightly into its bag

      6 min read

    • Article

      Zalmanovs

      Dec 6, 2022

      My brother Eli and I are lying on the couch, both of us nearly asleep, Eli’s toenails gently kneading my neck. I’m raising my throat to their sharpness, wanting him to press in, when from the next room we hear chimes. Then two clangs. Then: “Hello?”

      9 min read

    • Article

      Totally EMBARRASSING

      Jan 16, 2022

      Totally EMBARRASSING
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Portrait

      Mar 1, 2018

      I WAS BORN almost completely deaf, and by the time I was seven I had already become a prisoner to my education. In the morning, I had speech therapy and tutoring with Mr. Bishop. We sat at my family’s long dining-room table, which was always covered

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Bees Are Coming

      Aug 4, 2022

      The Bees Are Coming
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Hound and the Hidden Homework

      Feb 1, 2019

      The Hound and the Hidden Homework
      4 min read

    • Article

      Relevé: To Rise

      May 31, 2018

      Relevé: To Rise
      16 min read

    • Article

      Spying on MUM

      Apr 19, 2023

      Spying on MUM
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Cat With No Meow

      Jan 1, 2021

      “JESSALYN, ARE YOU trying to merge with your chair at the cellular level?” Mrs. Lockwood asked me in her low, croaky voice from the front of the classroom. Twenty heads turned in my direction, to witness whatever cellular merging was. My plan to disa

      6 min read

    • Article

      Totally EMBARRASSING

      Apr 8, 2024

      How bad is that blush? I was at the park with my older brother and he wanted to give me a piggyback. Of course, I said yes and I jumped on his back. After a few seconds of him twirling with me around on his back, I started feeling a bit sick. Before

      2 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Sep 1, 2022

      First prize 10 and under Tang Li, age 9 Palmetto Bay, FL My name is Anisa. I was in Hawaii on vacation. I enjoyed sipping refreshing drinks, overlooking the turquoise ocean, and dancing with others, before I overheard that the priceless Fire Ring wa

      10 min read

    • Article

      Dance with Me

      Sep 17, 2021

      Dance with Me
      9 min read

    • Article

      Totally EMBARRASSING

      May 10, 2020

      One time at school, I was running and someone left their lunch box on the floor and I didn’t see it. It made me trip over and I fell straight into a bin! It was soooo embarrassing! Kaitlin Got an embarro story to share? Email totalgirl@nextmedia.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Walking Velma

      May 28, 2021

      Walking Velma
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2019

      Lydia Rosenburg, age 10 Bellingham, WA The boy curled against the rundown brick wall, too weak to even sit up. The pain behind his eyelids had dulled to a throb, but now his world was nothing but darkness. How long ago had it happened? Day and night,

      7 min read

    • Article

      In the LIMELIGHT

      Dec 2, 2020

      In the LIMELIGHT
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Ellen Tebbits

    4/5

    205 ratings15 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary is an amusing contemporary realistic fiction book about Ellen Tebbits and her classmates. Otis Spotford, who is Ellen's dance teacher's son and in Ellen's class at school, can usually be counted on cause some kind of disturbance. In his mother's dance class, he comically imitates Ellen's dance steps. In school, he takes out his Mexican jumping beans so other students want to watch them instead of paying attention to the lesson. He also creates unnecessary trouble between Ellen and her best friend Augustine. This book would be great for readers in elementary school in grades 2 and up as a chapter book to learn about everyday life of elementary school students with humorous situations.
    • 4/5
      When I think about my own friendships that went awry in my long-ago youth (age 8 or 9), I find it very hard to figure out what the misunderstandings were about. Beverly Cleary has a gift for showing us the awkward pitfalls of friendship and the joy of discovering your best friend really is your best friend. Genius!
    • 5/5
      Everything was great in the book ????? wonderful book i loved it
    • 5/5
      So comedic and sooooooooo CUTE!!!!!!! I adored Ellen Tebbits. Beverly Cleary does it again!
    • 4/5
      Ellen Tebbits doesn't have a close friend in her neighborhood. No one to play with. But then she meets Austine, who has moved to town from California. At first, Ellen doesn't care for Austine, but soon they become best friends. The two girls behave like real 4th graders... occasionally being mean, even to their best friend. They have spats. They make up. And both have to deal with Otis Spofford, whose goal in life seems to be to irritate girls his age.Originally published in 1951, I thought this book aged remarkably well. Apart from the girls all wearing dresses to school, and the presence of a Maypole dance, the story fits just fine with the world today. A good light read for elementary school kids.
    • 3/5
      We didn't like this one as well as we liked the Henry Huggins series, but it was fun. We listened to it on audiobook, and I wasn't really thrilled with the voice Andrea Martin used for Austine. She made an eight-year-old girl sound like a middle-aged smoker. But we enjoyed it anyway.

      I cringed along with poor Ellen through her mistakes and embarrassments. I wish I knew what "winter underwear" looked like, though. I might start having my kids wear it (and perhaps wear it myself...it's not even November, and I'm already shivering and dreading the New England winter).
    • 4/5
      Read this one to my daughter but I fondly remember it from my childhood (I remember preferring Otis Spofford). Cleary does the usual fantastic job of creating great characters you can relate to and then putting them in hilarious situations.

      Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Quick read last night before bed: "Ellen Tebbits". The book showed its age in a few spots (listening to shows on the radio) but was worth reading. The author, Beverly Cleary, has such a way of capturing childen, it takes me back to the angst of not being picked to 'clap' the chalk erasers after class and other important aspects of being eight years old. Not as good as the Ramona books, but still a good read?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Ellen is probably not as alluring as rambunctious silly Ramona to most people, but she was my first Cleary book and I never forgot her. Upon rereading I found that Cleary can still make me remember the joy of skipping through huge empty elementary school halls while others were in class. (I was probably on my way to the principal's office, but the hallway time was still fun.)
    • 3/5
      I read all the Beverly Cleary books over and over again as a kid, so I wanted to revisit this old favorite on audiobook. While I'm not sure it really holds up compared to the realistic fiction being published today, it's still a relateable story of best friends. The audio recording is nicely voiced, but the volume fluctuates, making it annoying to listen to in the car sometimes. I didn't particularly care for the voices used because a lot of the kids seemed to have a thick New England accent when the story is set in Oregon, but kids might just find the voices funny.
    • 5/5
      One of the first chapter books I read myself as a child, I thought is was hilarious. I remember running in to tell my mom how funny it was when Ellen's winter underwear started falling down in ballet class, to Ellen's horror. As with all her books Beverly Cleary nails the childhood experience, the confusion and misunderstanding, as well as the warmth of friendship and understanding. A perennial favorite.
    • 5/5
      This book was written about 20 years earlier than most of the Ramona books, and it shows. Ellen's mother makes all her clothes for her and worries about her clean floor. (I'm not even sure I *have* a clean floor - or, some days, a floor at all!) The girls wear only dresses to school (and most everyplace else). Otis has a full cowboy outfit (with spurs) and we're told that MOST of the children in the school have a cowboy hat, or even a neckerchief. (When's the last time you saw that sort of cowboy mania? Oh right - back in the 50s, when this was published.) And let's not forget the infamous woolen undies. If it was old-fashioned back in the 50s, and this was the first I'd ever heard of it in the 90s, just think how foreign it must seem to today's third-graders! (And let's put a little note for the names. When is the last time you saw a class full of Ellens and Austines, Otises and Lindas? Ramona is a name that passes the test of time. Otis... not so much.)But you know what? It doesn't matter. The kids still seem as real as when they were written. They bake brownies, they worry about their teacher not liking them, and they get into a whopper of a fight when Ellen slaps her friend. Everything that happens has a ring of truth to it, even if the details aren't quite like they would be today.
    • 5/5
      Ellen needs a best friend and is in luck when Augustine moves to town from California in woolen underwear! Now the girls share a secret and a bond. I've loved this juvenile fiction tale of elementary very-best-girlfriends ever since I was quite young and higher recommend it for children ages 4 through 10. Ellen search for the beet, her trials with Otis, the naughty boy who teases her unmercifully - I dare say I can still recall almost every detail of this splendid story. Mmm......good.
    • 4/5
      THis is a wonderful realistic fiction story. The reader is able to step inside the character of Ellen and fell the things that are going on with her. It takes place in a wonderful little neighborhood that could easily be identified with a reader of any age.
    • 5/5
      This is my favorite book from young childhood and I made sure my daughters also had a copy. It's the only childhood book I read over and over. I would even try to beat out anyone else in my school from borrowing it from the library. I htink I really identified with Ellen.

    Book preview

    Ellen Tebbits - Beverly Cleary

    1

    Ellen’s Secret

    Ellen Tebbits was in a hurry. As she ran down Tillamook Street with her ballet slippers tucked under her arm, she did not even stop to scuff through the autumn leaves on the sidewalk. The reason Ellen was in a hurry was a secret she would never, never tell.

    Ellen was a thin little girl, with dark hair and brown eyes. She wore bands on her teeth, and her hair was scraggly on the left side of her face, because she spent so much time reading and twisting a lock of hair around her finger as she read. She had no brothers or sisters and, since Nancy Jane had moved away from next door, there was no one her own age living on Tillamook Street. So she had no really best friend. She did not even have a dog or cat to play with, because her mother said animals tracked in mud and left hair on the furniture.

    Of course Ellen had lots of friends at school, but that was not the same as having a best friend who lived in the same neighborhood and could come over to play after school and on Saturdays. Today, however, Ellen was almost glad she did not have a best friend, because best friends do not have secrets from one another. She was sure she would rather be lonely the rest of her life than share the secret of why she had to get to her dancing class before any of the other girls.

    The Spofford School of the Dance was upstairs over the Payless Drugstore. When Ellen came to the entrance at the side of the building, she paused to look anxiously up and down the street. Then, relieved that she saw no one she knew, she scampered up the long flight of steps as fast as she could run. There was not a minute to waste.

    She pushed open the door and looked quickly around the big, bare room. Maybe her plan was really going to work after all. She was the first pupil to arrive.

    Ellen’s teacher, Valerie Todd Spofford, was looking at some music with Mrs. Adams, the accompanist, at the piano in the corner of the room. She was really Mrs. John Spofford and had a son named Otis, who was in Ellen’s room at school. Because she taught dancing, people did not call her Mrs. John Spofford. They called her by her full name, Valerie Todd Spofford.

    Good afternoon, Ellen, she said. You’re early.

    Good afternoon, Mrs. Spofford, answered Ellen, and hurried past the long mirrors that covered one wall.

    When Ellen opened the dressing-room door, she made a terrible discovery. Someone was in the dressing room ahead of her.

    Austine Allen was sitting on a bench lacing her ballet slippers. Austine was a new girl, both in the dancing class and in Ellen’s room at school. Ellen knew she had just come from California, because she mentioned it so often. She thought the new girl looked good-natured and untidy, but she really had not paid much attention to her.

    Oh, said Ellen. Hello. I didn’t know anyone was here.

    I guess I’m early, said Austine and then added, but so are you.

    The girls looked at each other. Ellen noticed that Austine had already changed into the required costume of the Spofford School of the Dance. This was a short full skirt of tulle gathered onto a sateen top that had straps over the shoulders. Austine looked chubby in her green costume.

    Neither girl spoke. Oh, why doesn’t she leave, thought Ellen desperately. Maybe if I wait long enough she’ll go into the other room. Ellen removed her jacket as slowly as she could. No, I can’t wait. The others will be here any minute.

    This is a silly costume we have to wear, said Austine. When I took ballet lessons in California we always wore shorts and T-shirts.

    Well, I think it’s pretty, said Ellen, as she took her pink costume from the rack along the wall. Why don’t you go away, she thought. She said, It’s almost like real ballerinas wear. When I’m wearing it, I pretend I’m a real dancer.

    Austine stood up. Not even real ballerinas practice in full skirts like these. They wear leotards. In California . . .

    Well, I think leotards are ugly, interrupted Ellen, who was glad she knew that leotards were long tight-fitting garments. They look just like long underwear and I wouldn’t wear one for anything. I like our dresses better.

    I don’t, said Austine flatly. I don’t even like dancing lessons. At least in California . . .

    I don’t care what anybody does in California, said Ellen crossly. I’m tired of hearing you talk about California and so is everyone at school. So there! If you think California is so wonderful, why don’t you go back there?

    For a second Austine looked hurt. Ellen almost thought she was going to cry. Instead she made a face. All right for you! she said, and flounced out of the dressing room, leaving her clothes in an untidy heap on the bench.

    Instantly Ellen was sorry. What a terrible thing to say to a new girl! What if she herself were a new girl and someone had said that to her? How would she have felt? She hadn’t really meant to be rude, but somehow it had slipped out. She was so anxious to have Austine leave that she had not thought about what she was saying.

    But now that Austine was gone and Ellen was alone, there was not a moment to waste, not even in feeling sorry for what she had done. Feverishly she unbuttoned her sweater. She was starting to unfasten her dress when she heard some of the girls coming through the classroom.

    Frantically Ellen looked around the dressing room for a place to hide. She darted behind the costume rack. No, that wouldn’t do. The girls might see her when they took down their costumes.

    Snatching her pink dancing dress from the bench, Ellen dashed across the room and into the janitor’s broom closet, just as the girls came into the room. If only there were some way of locking the closet door from the inside! Ellen stood silent and rigid. When no one came near the door, she relaxed enough to look around by the light of the window high in the closet. She could see brooms, a mop and buckets, and a gunny sack full of sweeping compound.

    Careful not to knock over the brooms and buckets, she leaned against the door to listen. She could hear Linda and Janet and Barbara. Then she heard Betsy come in and, after a few minutes, Amelia and Joanne. Ellen counted them off on her fingers. Yes, they were all there.

    Trying to move carefully so she wouldn’t bump into anything, she took off first her starched plaid dress and then her slip. But she was so nervous that

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1