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Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

Beverly Cleary

If she can’t spell, why is she a librarian? Librarians should know how to spell.
BEVERLY CLEARY

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

Book Want Writing
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
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Book Chance Reading
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
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Bedtime Needs Writers
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Childhood Known
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Cousin Memories Mother
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 read my books aloud before they were published.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Publisher Read
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 had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom – there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Classroom Grade Lonely School
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
When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Patience Reading Teacher
The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Keys Successful Writing
Today I discovered two kinds of people who go to high school: those who wear new clothes to show off on the first day, and those who wear their oldest clothes to show they think school is unimportant.
BEVERLY CLEARY

School Thinking Two
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Before Grew Law Strict
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Growing Interest
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Girl Interesting Waiting
I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Happy Hope Readers
She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Mean Real Talent
I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Giving Writing
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Books Children 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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Burton Father Imagination Mother Real Step
Children want to do what grownups do.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Children Want Grownups
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
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.
BEVERLY CLEARY

Father Mother People

Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

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Didn’t the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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