With twins, reading aloud to them was the only chance I could get to sit down. I read them picture books until they were reading on their own.
BEVERLY CLEARYI 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.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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I read my books aloud before they were published.
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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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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.
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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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I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
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Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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Children want to do what grownups do.
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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.
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I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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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.
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The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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