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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

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

Childhood Known
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
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
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Children Growing Interest
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
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.
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Book Helping 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
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.
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Children Classroom Grade Lonely School
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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Ballerina Changed Mind
Children want to do what grownups do.
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Children Want Grownups
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 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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Cousin Memories Mother
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.
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Book Chance Reading
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.
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Patience Reading Teacher
She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
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Mean Real Talent
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
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Keys Successful Writing
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
Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
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Book Giving Years
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
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.
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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.
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Children Real 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
I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Giving Writing
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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Book Children Want
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
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
I read my books aloud before they were published.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Publisher Read
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Reading Teacher

Problem solving, and I don’t mean algebra, seems to be my life’s work. Maybe it’s everyone’s life’s work.

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Problem solving, and I don’t mean algebra, seems to be my life’s work. Maybe it’s everyone’s life’s work.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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