If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
BEVERLY CLEARYIf you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
BEVERLY CLEARYDidn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
BEVERLY CLEARYI didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
BEVERLY CLEARYI think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
BEVERLY CLEARYI was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
BEVERLY CLEARYWhen 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.
BEVERLY CLEARYMy mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
BEVERLY CLEARYShe 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.
BEVERLY CLEARYIn seventh grade…I found a place on the [library]shelf where my book would be if I ever wrote a book, which I doubted.
BEVERLY CLEARYHe 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.
BEVERLY CLEARYI read my books aloud before they were published.
BEVERLY CLEARYChildren should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
BEVERLY CLEARYIn 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 CLEARYIf she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
BEVERLY CLEARYIf 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 CLEARYI enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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