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.
BEVERLY CLEARYWith 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.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
-
-
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.
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 -
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother’s cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
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 -
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 -
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARY







