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The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

Beverly Cleary

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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Classroom Grade Lonely School
If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Want Writing
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
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

School Thinking Two
I read my books aloud before they were published.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Publisher Read
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Different Rummage Sales Shoes
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Reading Teacher
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Inspiring Mother
If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Know Librarians Should
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
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Growing Interest
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Girl Interesting Waiting
Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
BEVERLY CLEARY

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

Childhood Known
Children want to do what grownups do.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Want Grownups
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Only Child Sister
If we finished our work, the teacher would say, ‘Now don’t read ahead.’ But sometimes I hid the book I was reading behind my geography book and did read ahead. You can hide a lot behind a geography book.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Reading Teacher
Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Giving Years
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Father Mother People
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Mother Wise
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
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Before Grew Law Strict
I don’t ever go on the Internet. I don’t even know how it works.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Goes Internet Know Works
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
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Patience Reading Teacher

The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

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The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Beverly Cleary Quotes