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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.

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
Learned
Books
Child
Better
Book
Children
Disliked

More quotes by Beverly Cleary

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I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
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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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Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
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I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
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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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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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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 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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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.
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Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
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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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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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If we finished our work, the teacher would say, 'Now don't read ahead.' But sometimes I hid the book I was reading behind my geography book and did read ahead. You can hide a lot behind a geography book.
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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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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.
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Don't stop now. Go ahead! Be readers all of your lives. And don't forget, librarians and teachers can help you find the right books to read.
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People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.
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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.
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