Ellen Tebbits has a secret that she'll never share with anyone. That is, until she meets Austine--and discovers that Austine has the same secret! Soon the girls are best friends who do everything together--attending dance class, horseback riding, and dodging pesky Otis Spofford. But then Ellen does something terrible, and now Austine isn't speaking to her. Will Ellen be able to prove how sorry she truly is?

Secrets

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. ( )

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Third-grader Ellen Tebbits has a secret none of the other girls at school can know: her mother makes her wear winter underwear. During ballet class with Valerie Todd Spofford, Ellen and the new girl, Austine, realize that they share the same secret - and that makes it not so bad. The two become best friends, but when they ask their mothers to make them matching dresses, something goes awry (Otis Spofford has something to do with it) and the girls have a fight. Can they fix their misunderstanding and make up? ( )

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 stars, which for me means "loved it." I read this book several times when I was a kid, and I remember feeling so upset when Ellen and Austine stopped speaking to each other, and so happy when they made up at the end. The very idea of my mother making me a dress with a wide sash seemed like the stuff of fairy tales. This book holds up. I still love it. ( )

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! ( )

Ellen and her new best friend go on different events together and teach each other the meaning of being a friend even when they do not get off on the right foot at first, but learn through normal childrens views of who is right and dealing with other children that are not all that polite they build a bond that is strong, so when difficulties arise as they do at that age, the girls over come and friendship is most important. ( )

Rebekah thought it was a good book. We think Austine was a much nicer girl than Ellen, which is a shame since Ellen is the main character. In fact, if it weren't for Austine, Ellen would seemingly be friendless. But Cleary continues to write good stories, fun to read. We will have to read Otis Spofford sometime in the near future. ( )

5 yrs - maybe a bit out of date and not quite as good as her other books but we still enjoyed reading this novel. Because O hasn't experienced classroom injustice and fall outs with friends there were times when we'd finish a chapter and she wouldn't want to read the book again. She wouldn't say why but I suspect it's because there was something negative going on that made her uncomfortable (I've seen this when reading other novels). All in all I think it's a nice harmless way of being exposed to more grown up situations (anything above five is grown in O's world). ( )

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). ( )

Cute book illustrating that it is possible to live through doing something you don't want to do in clothes that make you uncomfortable. And you can do it while someone is trying really hard to annoy you.

Read lots of Beverly Cleary as a kid. Found several in bookstores as an adult and bought them as keepsakes. ( )

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. ( )

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.) ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

One of the first chapter books I read by 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. ( )

Beverly Cleary is another one of my favorite authors. I loved her books as a child. This book reminds me a lot of my childhood, my mom used to make me wear stuff that I didn't want to wear too. This is a good book about true friendship, you always go through obstacles but true friendship will overcome anything. In this book Ellen actually feels more like a real character than anything, the stuff she went through was a lot like my childhood.

Ellen meets a new friend at ballet class. Through out the book Ellen overcomes many obstacles such as riding a horse for the first time, putting up with Otis, and bringing a beet to school for show and tell. The best friends overcome a lot together. Until the beginning of the next school year. They decide to wear the same outfit. Ellen's is really cute and Austine's is not very cute. Ellen is getting tired of Austine pulling on her sash. Then Ellen feels someone pulling on her sash, she turns around and slaps Austine. They stop talking to each other and are no longer friends until one day they are assigned to clean the erasers out.
Website: http://www.lizpierson.com/pp.htm

This book is about a little girl who tries to hide her woolen underwear from the other girls at dance school. She makes friends with another girl and they share adventures through out the book and their friendship.

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. ( )

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. ( )