In the final chapter, the teacher chooses Ellen and Austine to go outside and clean the chalkboard erasers. Austine begins spending time with other girls and ignores Ellen, who thinks everyone looks down on her for slapping her best friend. Unfortunately, Austine was innocent Otis had pulled on her dress. Ellen gets irritated and finally slaps Austine in the lunch line when her sash comes undone. As the day goes on Austine begins to amuse herself by tugging on the sash of Ellen's dress. Austine's mother, however, cannot sew, so her dress doesn't turn out well. The plan is for their mothers to make identical dresses for them. Other chapters in the book deal with Ellen's first-ever time going horseback riding, her efforts to bring a giant beet to school for show-and-tell, and Ellen and Austine's efforts to put up with the obnoxious Otis' antics.ĭuring summer vacation, Ellen and Austine decide to dress as twins on their first day back to school. After class, she accidentally walks in on a new girl in class, Austine Allen, who's also wearing the dreaded underwear. When she arrives, she heads to change in a broom closet so the other girls cannot see her terrible secret: Ellen is wearing woolen underwear. The book opens when Ellen heads to her dance class at the studio run by the mother of a classmate, Otis Spofford, who is always teasing her. Third-grader Ellen Tebbits lives with her parents on Tillamook Street in Portland, Oregon. This humorous realistic fiction story tells the adventures of young Ellen and the new girl in her school, Austine Allen. It is Cleary's second published book, following Henry Huggins.

Ellen Tebbits is a 1951 children's novel written by Beverly Cleary.