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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.

Beverly Cleary

I 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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Classroom Grade Lonely School
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Boys Friendship
I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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Big Bigs Pests Sister
All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.
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Knowledge Librarian Valuable
We didn’t have television in those days, and many people didn’t even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.
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Father Mother People
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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Ballerina Changed Mind
Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Giving Years
I don’t necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that’s most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Imagination Stories
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Children Want
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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Girl Interesting Waiting
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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Children Only Child Sister
I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
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Children Inspiring Mother
The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else–grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.
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Boys Grief Humilation Perhaps Regret Turned
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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Book Library Seventh
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Children People
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Reading Teacher

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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