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 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 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 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 CLEARYI don’t ever go on the Internet. I don’t even know how it works.
BEVERLY CLEARYNothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
BEVERLY CLEARYThe 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.
BEVERLY CLEARYRamona 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 CLEARYI had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
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 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 CLEARYI 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.
BEVERLY CLEARYI wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
BEVERLY CLEARYChildren should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
BEVERLY CLEARYI 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 CLEARYI didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
BEVERLY CLEARYThe key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARY