I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
BEVERLY CLEARYI had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
BEVERLY CLEARYIn 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 CLEARYI was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
BEVERLY CLEARYThe key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARYI enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
BEVERLY CLEARYPeople are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
BEVERLY CLEARYRamona 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 CLEARYMy mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
BEVERLY CLEARYI read my books aloud before they were published.
BEVERLY CLEARYWhen 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 CLEARYQuite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
BEVERLY CLEARYThe 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 CLEARYIf you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
BEVERLY CLEARYChildren should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
BEVERLY CLEARYI just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
BEVERLY CLEARYI 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