In 1955 Beverly Cleary published “Beezus and Ramona,” and the world fell in love with Ramona Quimby, a spark plug of a kid sister who made being bad look like an awful lot of fun. The books were set in the Grant Park neighborhood of Portland, Ore., where Cleary grew up. In WAYS TO MAKE SUNSHINE (Bloomsbury, 192 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 11), Renée Watson gives us the first installment in a series about the fourth grader Ryan Hart, a Ramona-inspired character whom young readers are sure to love. This book is also set in Portland, where Watson, too, grew up.

Like Cleary’s books, “Ways to Make Sunshine” is perfectly in step with its time. It begins with Ryan learning that her family is moving to a smaller, older house in a different neighborhood because their landlord is selling the house Ryan and her older brother, Ray, have lived in all their lives. In an echo of Cleary’s “Ramona and Her Father,” published in 1977, Ryan’s father has lost his job as a mail carrier. The post office where he worked has closed and there are no open positions at other post offices. Ryan finds this baffling, and the question of whether the postal system is still vital is a filigree of present-day news that makes this novel pulse with relevancy.

The concept of home looms large for Ryan and her family — as it does now for all Americans, not just those who are African-American and lower middle class like Ryan’s family. Ryan’s father finds a new job but one that pays significantly less, a plotline that has gained unexpected resonance with the moment we are living in. Surely, there will be many Ryans in the months and years ahead, who will find that the changes in their parents’ earnings impact their lives in ways that feel confusing and at times punishing.

There is a powerful scene in which Ryan is grocery shopping with her mother and can’t buy the brand of ice cream she and her family love. Her mother tells her that all ice cream is pretty much the same. But Ryan, who has grown up on Tillamook and Ben & Jerry’s, knows that this is simply not true. It’s the denial of little luxuries that makes her feel unmoored and leaves her questioning whether she and her family will really be OK.

As Watson so evocatively writes: “This is how it is now. No more name-brand food, or clothes, or soap, or lotion. Everything we buy is on sale and now grocery shopping takes a long, long time because instead of going to one store, we shop at two or three depending on what Mom has a coupon for.”

“This is how it is now” might be the refrain of 2020, and readers, both adults and kids, will find themselves in lock step with Ryan as she valiantly bumbles through what has become her new normal.

Young readers will enjoy the world of friends, new and old, whom Ryan meets and the ways they find to approach the things that feel impossibly hard — from moving into a new house that is really very old and a little shabby, to speaking in public, to navigating a posse of girls who don’t get why your hair changes texture when you go swimming.

As one of Ryan’s new friends tells her, “Being nervous means you care about what you’re going to do.”

Fans of Renée Watson know that lionhearted passion is one of the major through-lines in her work, and “Ways to Make Sunshine” is a fine addition to the collection.

One can only imagine that Ramona Quimby would have a lot of fun cooking up adventures with this new girl in town.

As of this writing, Beverly Cleary — at 104 — is still alive. Can the powers that be cook up a Ramona Quimby/Ryan Hart crossover book, stat? Please and thank you.

This brave new world we’re living in sure could use more stories about these bright and imaginative girls who specialize in “making a way out of no way.”