black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I read my books aloud before they were published.

Beverly Cleary

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 CLEARY

Book Chance Reading
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Mother Wise
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 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
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 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

Book Children Want
Don’t stop now. Go ahead! Be readers all of your lives. And don’t forget, librarians and teachers can help you find the right books to read.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Helping Teacher
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

Book Imagination Stories
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Only Child Sister
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Ballerina Changed Mind
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Keys Successful Writing
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Growing Interest
Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
BEVERLY CLEARY

Care Girl People
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

Algebra Mean Problem
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
BEVERLY CLEARY

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

I read my books aloud before they were published.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I read my books aloud before they were published.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beverly Cleary Quotes