Visit the children’s room at any public library or shop any Scholastic Book Fair in any elementary school, and it’s easy to see that children’s book author Beverly Cleary is a rock star. Henry Huggins, Ramona and Beezus, Socks the Cat — each of these beloved characters are like family to young readers, their parents and grandparents.
Rock-star children’s book author seemed an unlikely career path for a child who, until she was in second grade, refused to learn to read.
Born on a farm in rural Oregon in 1916, Beverly, an only child, didn’t see the sense in learning to read because she preferred to have her mother, a stay-at-home teacher who opened the town’s first library, read to her. Beverly loved to play outside, often alone, and credited her early childhood exploring the farm for her ability to observe and remember details that she later used in her books.
In 1922 Beverly’s family left the farm for Portland, Oregon, where Beverly entered first grade. Her class had 40 students, which terrified and intimidated a little girl used to being alone. Her teacher placed Beverly in the struggling reader group, the Blackbirds, where Beverly lived in fear of being asked to read out loud. It wasn’t until she was in second grade that Beverly found a book she enjoyed — The Dutch Twins, by Lucy Fitch Perkins. “It was quite a revelation,” she said.
The Grant Park neighborhood in Portland, where Beverly was raised, would eventually become the setting for many of her books. It was there, in sixth grade, that a teacher encouraged her to become a writer because of the quality of the stories she submitted for class assignments.
Instead, she set her sights on becoming a children’s librarian. In 1938 Beverly graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in English, and one year later earned her master’s degree in library science from the University of Washington. She married Clarence Cleary, whom she met in college, in 1940 and the couple settled in Yakima, Washington, where Beverly accepted a job as a children’s librarian.
Her library’s story hour was where Beverly learned to write for children. Rather than read a book, she would stand in front of the group and make up stories — and as any veteran of live lit will tell you, there’s nothing better than a live audience to try out pacing, plot and character.
She also learned, after trying to find books that interested her young patrons, that there just weren’t a lot of children’s books that appealed to kids. She decided to write her own.
On Jan. 2, 1949, after she and Clarence moved to California, Beverly sat down to write her first book. As she tells the story, she first thought it would be about a young woman’s role in society, but what kept coming into her mind was a little boy in Yakima who asked her one day, where are the library books about kids like us?
“Henry Huggins was in the third grade. His hair looked like a scrubbing brush and most of his grown-up front teeth were in.” Those are the first lines Beverly wrote for her first book, Henry Huggins, which she published in 1950. More books followed, about Henry, his dog Ribsy, his friend Beezus and her little sister Ramona — all set in Beverly’s childhood neighborhood on Klickitat Street.
Her characters were based on children she knew growing up, and on those she met at the library. They did the same things she did when she was a child, and had the same experiences she saw her library kids having. When her publisher asked her to write a book about Ramona, Beverly at first said no, thinking she couldn’t write from a kindergartner’s perspective because she was never in kindergarten. She changed her mind after giving birth to twins, and in 1955 published Beezus and Ramona. In Ramona, a star was born.
Cleary’s books are among the first in children’s literature to describe the world from a child’s perspective, rather than as an adult observing children’s behavior. Ramona, especially, enjoyed a freedom on the page that girls typically didn’t have; rather than making her prim, proper and well-behaved, Beverly let Ramona do all the things boys and girls really did, and feel all the emotions a grade schooler feels. Readers, then and now, loved it.
Today, Cleary is the bestselling children’s author of all time. Her books have sold more than 90 million copies worldwide, been translated into 14 languages and have earned her the Newberry Medal (the highest award for children’s literature), several Caldecott medals, and countless other awards. She’s been designated a Library of Congress Living Legend, and in 2003 received a National Medal of Arts.
She still lives in California, having recently turned 104. Her birthday, April 12, is celebrated around the world with DEAR — Drop Everything and Read — day, made famous by Ramona.
Today, you can tour the Portland neighborhood where Beverly grew up, and see the schools, streets and parks where Henry and Ramona had their adventures. In 1995, neighbors and fans dedicated the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden, featuring sculptures of Cleary’s most famous characters. To raise funds for the garden, librarians around the world placed penny jars on their desks for children to help contribute.