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The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

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
Writing
Much
Adults
Keys
Successful
Possible
Story
Keep
Stories

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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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If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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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.
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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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I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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I read my books aloud before they were published.
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I am not a pest, Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.
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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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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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I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.
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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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What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
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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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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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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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My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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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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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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I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
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