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Children want to do what grownups do.

Beverly Cleary

We didn’t have television in those days, and many people didn’t even have radios. My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening.
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Father Mother People
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.
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Book Imagination Stories
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
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Book Mother Wise
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.
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Book Library Seventh
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.
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Girl Interesting Waiting
I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
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Children Happy Hope Readers
He was dressed as if everything he wore had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except that the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.
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Different Rummage Sales Shoes
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
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Books Children People
I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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Big Bigs Pests Sister
I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
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Children Inspiring Mother
Today I discovered two kinds of people who go to high school: those who wear new clothes to show off on the first day, and those who wear their oldest clothes to show they think school is unimportant.
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School Thinking Two
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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Children Only Child Sister
All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.
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Knowledge Librarian Valuable
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 grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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Before Grew Law Strict
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Boys Grief Humilation Perhaps Regret Turned

Children want to do what grownups do.

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Children want to do what grownups do.

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