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

Beverly Cleary

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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Different Rummage Sales Shoes
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Boys Friendship
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Real Teacher
Problem solving, and I don’t mean algebra, seems to be my life’s work. Maybe it’s everyone’s life’s work.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Algebra Mean Problem
I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Enjoy Thirds Writing
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
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
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Childhood Known
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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Book Children Want
Children want to do what grownups do.
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Children Want Grownups
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
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
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
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Children Growing Interest
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
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Reading Teacher
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
I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Inspiring Mother

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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