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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

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

Ballerina Changed Mind
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
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Childhood Known
I read my books aloud before they were published.
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Books Publisher Read
I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
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Book Children Grow Up
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Children People
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
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Fairy Tales Great Library
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
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
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.
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Book Boys Friendship
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
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!
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School Ships Years
If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
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Know Librarians Should
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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Book Child Children
Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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Care Girl People
Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
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Able Ideas World
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

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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Popular Authors

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