The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARYIf 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.
More Beverly Cleary Quotes
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If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
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I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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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.
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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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If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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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 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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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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Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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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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I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
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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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Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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