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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

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

School Ships Years
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
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

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

Children Happy Hope Readers
Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Giving Years
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Before Grew Law Strict
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

Burton Father Imagination Mother Real Step
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Real Teacher
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Childhood Known
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
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
I read my books aloud before they were published.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Publisher Read
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Keys Successful Writing
Children want to do what grownups do.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Want Grownups
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

Book Library Seventh
I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Big Bigs Pests Sister

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beverly Cleary Quotes