In 50 years, the world has changed, especially for kids, but kids' needs haven't changed. They still need to feel safe, be close to their families, like their teachers, and have friends to play with.
— Beverly Cleary
Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona.
I like to read, walk, cook, and travel to cities. We live in the country, so we miss museums and the bustle of city life.
I longed for funny stories about the sort of children who lived in my neighborhood.
I don't think children themselves have changed that much. It's the world that has changed.
I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.
I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.
I don't ever go on the Internet. I don't even know how it works.
I rarely read children's books.
I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
I was a librarian.
I read my books aloud before they were published.
One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.
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.
What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
People are inclined to say that I am Ramona. I'm not sure that's true, but I did share some experiences with her.
I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature. Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them.
I particularly enjoy cello music because our daughter plays the cello. I have listened to her practice for so many hours that I am familiar with the music written for that instrument. I am also fond of the popular music of the 1930s because my future husband and I danced to it so many Saturday nights when we were in college.
I think adults sometimes don't think about how children are feeling about the adult problems.
'Dear Mr. Henshaw' came about because two different boys from different parts of the country asked me to write a book about a boy whose parents were divorced, and so I wrote 'Dear Mr. Henshaw,' and it won the Newbery, and I was - it's been very popular.
I know that when I was a children's librarian, that was about 1940, boys particularly asked where were the books about kids like us, and there weren't any at that time.
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children. Some of the teachers were just doing their job, but others had that little extra. They really cared about children and they wore pretty dresses.
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.
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.
I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children.
I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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.
I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
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.
Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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.
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.
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
Ramona was originally an accidental character I added to the Henry Huggins books because I noticed that none of the characters had siblings. I added Ramona as Beazus' pestering little sister.
Novels by British writers are among my favorites because our family has enjoyed travel in England and because they are written with an economy of words as if they were written with a pen instead of a computer. Penelope Fitzgerald is a favorite.
I wrote books to entertain. I'm not trying to teach anything! If I suspected the author was trying to show me how to be a better behaved girl, I shut the book.
I'm just lucky. I do have very clear memories of childhood. I find that many people don't, but I'm just very fortunate that I have that kind of memory.
My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon - this was before television, and we didn't even have a radio - I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered I was reading and enjoying what I read.
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!
I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.
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.
I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.
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.
I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.
I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
Children want to do what grownups do.
Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.
