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

Beverly Cleary

Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?
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Care Girl People
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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Children Reading Teacher
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 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 was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.
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Children Only Child Sister
If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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Book Want Writing
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
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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Book Father Mother
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
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
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
All knowledge is valuable to a librarian.
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Knowledge Librarian Valuable
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
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
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Books Children People
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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Bedtime Needs Writers
She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
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Mean Real Talent
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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Before Grew Law Strict
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
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Book Mother Wise
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 she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
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Know Librarians Should
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
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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Algebra Mean Problem
I read my books aloud before they were published.
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Books Publisher Read
As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be ‘better’ children.
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Book Child Children
I don’t ever go on the Internet. I don’t even know how it works.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Goes Internet Know Works

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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