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People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.

Beverly Cleary

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!
BEVERLY CLEARY

School Ships Years
Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
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Able Ideas World
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
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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Before Grew Law Strict
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
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Book Mother Wise
Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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Care Girl People
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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Book Father Mother
Today I discovered two kinds of people who go to high school: those who wear new clothes to show off on the first day, and those who wear their oldest clothes to show they think school is unimportant.
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School Thinking Two
He was dressed as if everything he wore had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except that the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.
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Different Rummage Sales Shoes
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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Children Only Child Sister
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.
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Book Chance Reading
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
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Fairy Tales Great Library
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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Book Child Children
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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Bedtime Needs Writers
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
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Childhood Known
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Burton Father Imagination Mother Real Step

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.

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People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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