The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARYHe 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.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
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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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I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
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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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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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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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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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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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Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
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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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I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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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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I don’t ever go on the Internet. I don’t even know how it works.
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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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She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
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I read my books aloud before they were published.
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I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
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I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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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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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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