I read my books aloud before they were published.
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.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
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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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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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Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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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.
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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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Problem solving, and I don’t mean algebra, seems to be my life’s work. Maybe it’s everyone’s life’s work.
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I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
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I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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Don’t stop now. Go ahead! Be readers all of your lives. And don’t forget, librarians and teachers can help you find the right books to read.
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Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
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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.
BEVERLY CLEARY







