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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

Beverly Cleary

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
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
If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Want Writing
I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Giving Writing
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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Book Imagination Stories
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
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Childhood Known
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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Burton Father Imagination Mother Real Step
If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
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Know Librarians Should
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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Book Giving Years
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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Girl Interesting Waiting
I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
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Book Children Grow Up
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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Different Rummage Sales Shoes
Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.
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Able Ideas World
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
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Children Real Teacher
I read my books aloud before they were published.
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Books Publisher Read
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Reading Teacher

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

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I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

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Popular Authors

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