Quote

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.

Beverly Cleary

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Beverly Cleary
Age: 104 †
Born: 1916
Born: April 12
Died: 2021
Died: March 25
Author
Autobiographer
Librarian
Writer
McMinnville
Oregon
Beverly Atlee Cleary
Book
Pictures
Looks
Thirds
Rainy
Even
Reader
Grade
Since
Picked
Though
Grades
Reading
Sunday
Ever
Discovered
Look
Third

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I was an only child I didn't have a sister, or sisters.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.
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The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.
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I am not a pest, Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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Children want to do what grownups do.
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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.
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I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
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I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.
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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.
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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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I read my books aloud before they were published.
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Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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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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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.
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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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Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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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.
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