The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARYI was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
-
-
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
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 -
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
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 -
I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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 -
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 -
I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
Problem solving, and I don’t mean algebra, seems to be my life’s work. Maybe it’s everyone’s life’s work.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
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 -
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
BEVERLY CLEARY -
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
BEVERLY CLEARY