Generations of readers have grown up with her books and she’s responsible for creating some of the most beloved figures in children’s literature—including Henry Huggins, Ralph S. Mouse, and the rambunctious Ramona Quimby. Cleary started writing children’s books in her 30s. She had worked as a librarian and a bookstore clerk, and she noticed that children often asked her for books about “kids like us.” That sparked Cleary’s desire to write stories about the everyday experiences of ordinary children, “the sort of boys and girls that I knew in my neighborhood and in my school,” she once told NPR. “I think children like to find themselves in books.” Cleary’s stories depict the joy and drama of childhood as it is—not as some grown-up thinks it should be. Read on for 10 of Beverly Cleary’s most endearing quotes on writing, reading and why today’s kids aren’t so different from children 100 years ago.
- “I have stayed true to my own memories of childhood, which are not different in many ways from those of children today. Although their circumstances have changed, I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed.” —Atlanticinterview, 2011
- “I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.” —Atlanticinterview, 2011
- “Whenever it rains, I feel the urge to write.” —Columnsmagazine interview, 2008
- “I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children. Some of the teachers were just doing their job, but others had that little extra.” —Atlanticinterview, 2011
- “As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.”—Columnsmagazine interview, 2008
- “Books in those days, back in the 1920s, had been published in England, and the children had nannies and pony carts and they seemed like a bunch of sissies to me.” —TODAY.com interview, 2016
- “I don’t think anything will ever replace the pleasure of holding a book and turning its pages.” —Atlanticinterview, 2011
- “I don’t ever go on the Internet. I don’t even know how it works.” —Atlanticinterview, 2011
- “I remember every blade of grass from my childhood.” —Columnsmagazine interview, 2008
- “I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.” —Atlanticinterview, 2011
