Beverly Cleary
Beverly Cleary
Beverly Atlee Clearyis an American writer of children's and young adult fiction. One of America's most successful living authors, 91 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide since her first book was published in 1950. Some of her best known characters are Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, Ramona and Beezus Quimby, and Ralph S. Mouse...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth12 April 1916
CityMcminnville, OR
CountryUnited States of America
With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
Otis was inspired by a boy who sat across the aisle from me in sixth grade. He was a lively person. My best friend appears in assorted books in various disguises.
She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships!
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.
Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
In seventh grade...I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.
Children want to do what grownups do.
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
If we finished our work, the teacher would say, 'Now don't read ahead.' But sometimes I hid the book I was reading behind my geography book and did read ahead. You can hide a lot behind a geography book.