Children’s Author Beverly Cleary, Creator Of Ramona Quimby, Dies At 104

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Terry Smith/Time

Terry Smith/Time

Children ‘s writer Beverly Cleary died Thursday in Carmel, Calif., her publisher HarperCollins said. She was 104 years old. Cleary was the godhead of some of the most authentic characters in children ‘s literature — Henry Huggins, Ralph S. Mouse and the choleric Ramona Quimby. Generations of readers tore around the playground, learned to write in cursive, rebelled against tuna fish sandwiches and acquired all the glorious scrapes and bruises of childhood right field along with Ramona. Cleary ‘s simple mind — to write about the kids in her own region — ensured that her books have never gone out of print. “ I think children want to read about convention, everyday kids. That ‘s what I wanted to read about when I was growing up, ” Cleary told NPR ‘s Linda Wertheimer in 1999. “ I wanted to read about the sort of boys and girls that I knew in my neighborhood and in my school. And in my childhood, many years ago, children ‘s books seemed to be about english children, or pioneer children. And that was n’t what I wanted to read. And I think children like to find themselves in books. ” Her write manner — clear, address, elementary — mirrored the author ‘s own trajectory. Cleary was still a young girlfriend when she decided to become a children ‘s book writer. By the 1940s she ‘d become a children ‘s librarian in Portland, Ore., and she remembered boys in finical would ask her : “ Where are the books about kids like us ? ”

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There were n’t any, so she sat down and wrote Henry Huggins, her foremost book about a regular little male child on Klickitat Street in Portland. Henry Huggins was a hit upon first print, but her readers wanted to hear more about the little female child who lived just up the street. Ramona Quimby, the most celebrated of all of Cleary ‘s characters, was unforgettable. mischievous, game and a hater of spell, Ramona would be the beginning to tell you she ‘s not a plague — no matter what anyone ( particularly her older sister Beezus ) says. In the open chapter of Ramona the Pest, Ramona responds to her big sister :

“ I ‘m not acting like a pest, I ‘m singing and skim, ” said Ramona, who had only recently learned to skip with both feet. Ramona did not think she was a pest. No topic what others said, she never thought she was a pest. People who called her a plague were always bigger, so they could be unfair.

Cleary ‘s memories were cinematically detailed. In her autobiography, A Girl From Yamhill, she wrote about clamping about on tin can stilts and yelling “ pieface ! ” at the neighbor. She was an lone child, who grew up in Portland during the Depression and still remembered when her beget lost his job .

“ I was embarrassed, ” she recalled. “ I did n’t know how to talk to my father. I know he felt sol awful at that time that I good — I guess I felt equally severe. And I think adults sometimes do n’t think about how children are feeling about the pornographic problems. ” Cleary used her crystal-clear recall to capture the tribulations of unseasoned children finely in her books. “ I ‘m just golden. I do have very clean memories of childhood, ” Cleary said. “ I find that many people do n’t, but I ‘m just very fortunate. ” Barbara Lalicki, who edited the 1999 Ramona koran, Ramona ‘s World, said Cleary steered the field of children ‘s writing off from fantasy and historical fabrication. She was a “ pioneer, ” Lalicki said, in this “ rooted-in-reality kind of book for children. ” Cleary ‘s books racked up awards and were constantly reprinted and re-illustrated. Librarians kept shelves devoted wholly to Cleary ‘s books, and teachers read the books aloud to their students. For about 30 years — despite objections from publishers who wanted her focus on writing more books — Cleary answered all of her fan chain mail herself. “ I learned a draw from children ‘s letters, ” Cleary said. “ Dear Mr. Henshaw came about because two different boys from different parts of the nation asked me to write a book about a son whose parents were divorced. And indeed I wrote Dear Mr. Henshaw, and it won the Newbery. ” Longtime children ‘s librarian Nancy Pearl remembers hearing “ a fantastic, possibly apocryphal floor ” about Cleary going to speak to a class of second- or third-graders : “ This fiddling boy kept raising his hand, he had so much to ask her, and he said to her, ‘Mrs. Cleary, I understand how you write your books. … But where do you get your wallpaper ? ‘ … I think that ‘s how involved kids get in those books. ” I think deep devour inside children are all the same. They want two loving parents and they would prefer a house with a region they can play in. They want teachers that they can like. I do n’t think children have changed that much. It ‘s the world that has changed.

even with all the contemporary distractions — video games, music, movies and more — Cleary believed kids would keep on recitation. “ I do n’t think anything takes the place of read, ” Cleary said in 2006. In one letter, a little girl said that reading in her room by herself was “ like having a little television set in your head. ” Decades after they were written, Cleary ‘s books still ring true for children. “ I think cryptic down inside children are all the lapp, ” she said. “ They want two loving parents and they would prefer a house with a vicinity they can play in. They want teachers that they can like. I do n’t think children have changed that much. It ‘s the global that has changed. ” And Beverly Cleary, with her good, straight-talking heroes and heroines, surely changed it for the better .