• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.

Beverly Cleary

Related Topics

BookChildChildren

Popular Authors

Marilyn Monroe Paulo Coelho Abraham Lincoln C. S. Lewis Khalil Gibran Charlie Chaplin Gautama Buddha Isaac Newton

| Next

More Beverly Cleary Quotes

• 

  I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  BigBigsPestsSister
• 

  When 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 CLEARY
  PatienceReadingTeacher
• 

  I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  ChildrenGivingWriting
• 

  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
  BurtonFatherImaginationMotherRealStep
• 

  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.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  BookChanceReading
• 

  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
  BookHelpingTeacher
• 

  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.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  SchoolThinkingTwo
• 

  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
  SchoolShipsYears
• 

  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
  ChildrenClassroomGradeLonelySchool
• 

  All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  KnowledgeLibrarianValuable
• 

  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
  BookBoysFriendship
• 

  I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  ChildhoodKnown
• 

  If 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 CLEARY
  BookReadingTeacher
• 

  What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  ChildrenGrowingInterest
• 

  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
  GirlInterestingWaiting
• 

  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
  FatherMotherPeople
• 

  I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  BallerinaChangedMind
• 

  Children want to do what grownups do.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  Children WantGrownups
• 

  I don’t ever go on the Internet. I don’t even know how it works.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  GoesInternetKnow Works
• 

  Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  CareGirlPeople
• 

  I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  BeforeGrewLawStrict
• 

  The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  KeysSuccessfulWriting
• 

  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 CLEARY
  BookLibrarySeventh
• 

  My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  BookFatherMother
• 

  I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  ChildrenHappyHopeReaders
• 

  I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  BookChildrenGrow Up
• 

  I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.

  BEVERLY CLEARY
  Fairy TalesGreatLibrary