SOLVED. Kids Book (part of a series?) about a naughty little girl who wants curly hair and her mother puts it up in either pin curls or rag curls. [s]

[Maggie]

I read this book as a child, and I think it may have been old then, so read prior to 1993, and published anywhere from the 30s to the 80s. From what I’m remembering it was a book about one particular little girl, and the trouble she got into. It was very possibly British, but also maybe not. The one short story had a description of another little girl in her class who had perfect ringlets, and all our protagonist girl wanted to do was pull one and watch it bounce, and she may have gotten in trouble for that? But it turns out she wishes she had curly/ringlets hair, and so her mother puts it up in either pin curls or rag curls, and she sleeps very poorly, but wakes to find her hair is just as bouncy as promised, and she is so delighted by it. But I think she decided in the end that curling her hair every night was too much work.

This little girl seemed to get into trouble a lot if I’m remembering correctly. Also continued thinking about it makes me believe there may have been more than one book about this girl, who was always getting into scrapes!

Any help would be amazing - thanks!

[Rainbowheart]

The first part sounds like Ramona the Pest.

The other interesting person was a big girl named Susan. Susan's hair looked like the hair on the girls in the pictures of the old-fashioned stories Beezus liked to read. It was reddish-brown and hung in curls like springs that touched her shoulders and bounced as she walked. Ramona had never seen such curls before. All the curly-haired girls she knew wore their hair short. Ramona put her hand to her own short straight hair, which was an ordinary brown, and longed to touch that bright springy hair. She longed to stretch one of those curls and watch it spring back. Boing! thought Ramona, making a mental noise like a spring on a television cartoon and wishing for thick, springy boing-boing hair like Susan’s.

At last Ramona felt a tap on her shoulder. Her turn had come to run around the circle! She ran as fast as she could to catch up with the sneakers pounding on the asphalt ahead of her. The boing-boing curls were on the other side of the circle. Ramona was coming closer to them. She put out her hand. She took hold of a curl, a thick, springy curl—

“Yow!” screamed the owner of the curls.

Startled, Ramona let go. She was so surprised by the scream that she forgot to watch Susan's curl spring back.

[Becca]

I think that's one of the My Naughty Little Sister stories by Dorothy Edwards. I remember it clearly although I'm having trouble tracking down which volume it was in.

[Becca]

Aha - the story / chapter is called "My Naughty Little Sister Is A Curly Girl" and it appears in My Naughty Little Sister Storybook, although it may be in other volumes too. The girl with the curly hair she admires is called Winnie. Frustratingly there's only a snippet view available on Google Books, but you can search inside for e.g. "Winnie" or "curls" to get glimpses of the story - https://www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

Edit: it also appears in My Naughty Little Sister's Friends, The Complete My Naughty Little Sister and My Naughty Little Sister: 25 Favourite Stories. This edition of My Naughty Little Sister's Friends shows her having her hair put in curling rags on the cover

[Maggie]

It is definitely My Naughty Little Sister! Thanks so much - No to try and locate a copy to read with my curly girl daughter. :)

[Becca]

Glad to help! I loved these books when I was growing up - it's so lovely that you and your daughter can enjoy them together.