I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
BEVERLY CLEARYI 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.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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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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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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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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I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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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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People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
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The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
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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 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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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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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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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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My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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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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Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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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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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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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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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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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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I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
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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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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.
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All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.
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