The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARYI had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom – there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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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.
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I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
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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.
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She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
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I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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I don’t ever go on the Internet. I don’t even know how it works.
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Ramona stepped back into her closet, slid the door shut, pressed an imaginary button, and when her imaginary elevator had made its imaginary descent, stepped out onto the real first floor and raced a real problem. Her mother and father were leaving for Parents’ Night.
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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.
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I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
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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.
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I feel sometimes that in children’s books there are more and more grim problems, but I don’t know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.
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She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.
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I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
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I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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