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

Beverly Cleary

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

Book Reading Teacher
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

Girl Interesting Waiting
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

Different Rummage Sales Shoes
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Fairy Tales Great Library
The 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 CLEARY

Boys Grief Humilation Perhaps Regret Turned
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

Children Classroom Grade Lonely School
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

Father Mother People
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Father Mother
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

School Thinking Two
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

Book Imagination Stories
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Children Want
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Growing Interest
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

Cousin Memories Mother
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Only Child Sister
I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Enjoy Thirds Writing
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

Book Boys Friendship

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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