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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
Much
Adults
Keys
Successful
Possible
Story
Keep
Stories
Writing

More quotes by Beverly Cleary

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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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As a child, I disliked books in which children learned to be 'better' children.
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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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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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I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.
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What interests me is what children go through while growing up.
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If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.
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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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I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
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Children want to do what grownups do.
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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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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 wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
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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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I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.
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I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
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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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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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My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
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