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

Beverly Cleary

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
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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Book Child Children
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.
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Boys Grief Humilation Perhaps Regret Turned
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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Ballerina Changed Mind
I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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Children Only Child Sister
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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Bedtime Needs Writers
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
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Childhood Known
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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Book Boys Friendship
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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Children Happy Hope Readers
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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Father Mother People
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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Book Reading Teacher
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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School Ships Years
Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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Care Girl People
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
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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Children Reading Teacher
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Library Seventh

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

More Beverly Cleary Quotes