She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
BEVERLY CLEARYWe 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.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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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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People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
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Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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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 think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
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All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.
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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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The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
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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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I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
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Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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I read my books aloud before they were published.
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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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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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Children want to do what grownups do.
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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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Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
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