Beloved children’s book author Beverly Cleary dies at 104

Beverly Cleary, the famous children’s author whose memories of her childhood in Oregon have been shared with millions of people through Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins, has passed away. She was 104 years old.

Cleary editor HarperCollins announced Friday that the author died Thursday in northern California, where she had lived since the 1960s. No cause of death has been given.

Trained as a librarian, Cleary didn’t start writing books until her early thirties, when she wrote “Henry Huggins,” published in 1950. Children around the world loved the adventures of Huggins and his neighbors. Ellen Tebbits, Otis Spofford, Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby and her younger sister, Ramona. They live in a healthy place downstairs from the house on Klickitat Street – a real Portland, Oregon street, the town where Cleary spent much of his youth.

Among the titles “Henry” were “Henry and Ribsy”, “Henry and the paper road” and “Henry and Beezus”.

Ramona, perhaps her best-known character, made her debut in “Henry Huggins” with only a brief mention.

“All the kids seemed to be just kids, so I threw out a little sister and she didn’t go. She kept appearing in every book,” she said in a phone interview. in March 2016 from his Californian home.

Cleary herself was an only child and stated that the character is not a mirror.

“I was a well-behaved little girl, not what I wanted,” she says. “In Ramona’s age, at that time, the children were playing outside. We played hopscotch and skipping rope and I loved them and I still had scraped knees.

In all, there were eight books on Ramona between “Beezus and Ramona” in 1955 and “Ramona’s World” in 1999. Others included “Ramona the Pest” and “Ramona and Her Father”. In 1981, “Ramona and Her Mother” won the National Book Award.

Cleary wasn’t writing recently because she said she thought “it’s important for writers to know when to quit.”

“I even got rid of my typewriter. It was a beautiful machine but I hate typing. When I started to write I found that I was thinking more about my typing than what I was going to do. say, so I wrote it long ago “. she said in March 2016.

Although she put her pen away, Cleary reissued three of her most cherished books with three famous fans writing forewords for the new editions.

Actress Amy Poehler wrote the first section of “Ramona Quimby, 8”; author Kate DiCamillo wrote the opening for “The Mouse and the Motorcycle”; and author Judy Blume wrote the foreword to “Henry Huggins”.

Self-proclaimed “fuddy-duddy” Cleary said there was a simple reason she started writing children’s books.

“As a librarian, kids always asked for books about kids like us.” Well, there weren’t any books about kids like them. So when I sat down to write, I found myself writing about the kind of kids I had grown up with, ”Cleary said in an Associated Press interview in 1993.

“Dear Mr. Henshaw,” the touching story of a lonely boy who corresponds to an author of children’s books, won the 1984 John Newbery Medal for Most Distinguished Contribution to American Children’s Literature. This “came about because two different boys from different parts of the country asked me to write a book about a boy whose parents were divorced,” she told National Public Radio as she approached her. 90th anniversary.

“Ramona and her father” in 1978 and “Ramona Quimby, 8” in 1982 were named Newbery Honor Books.

Cleary ventured into fantasy with “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” and the “Runaway Ralph” and “Ralph S. Mouse” sequels. “Socks,” about a cat’s struggle for acceptance when its owners have a baby, is told from the point of view of the animal itself.

She was named a living legend in 2000 by the Library of Congress. In 2003, she was chosen as one of the laureates of the National Medal of Arts and met President George W. Bush. It is praised in literary circles everywhere.

She has produced two autobiographical volumes for young readers, “A Girl from Yamhill”, about her childhood, and “My Own Two Feet”, which tells the story of her college days and young adults until at the time of his first book.

“It seems that I grew up with an unusual memory. People are amazed at the things I remember. I think it came from living in isolation on a farm for the first six years of my life where my main activity was observing, ”Cleary said.

Cleary was born Beverly Bunn on April 12, 1916 in McMinnville, Oregon, and lived on a farm in Yamhill until her family moved to Portland when she was of school age. She was a slow reader, whom she attributed to illness, and a petty first-year teacher who disciplined her by slamming a steel-tipped pointer on the back of her hands.

“I had chickenpox, smallpox and tonsillitis in the first year and no one seemed to think it had anything to do with my reading problems,” Cleary told the AP. “I just went mad and rebellious.”

In sixth or seventh grade, “I decided I was going to write children’s stories,” she said.

Cleary graduated from college in Ontario, California, and the University of California at Berkeley, where she met her husband, Clarence. They married in 1940; Clarence Cleary passed away in 2004. They were the parents of twins, a boy and a girl born in 1955 who inspired his book “Mitch and Amy”.

Cleary studied librarianship at the University of Washington and worked as a children’s librarian in Yakima, Washington, and post librarian at Oakland Military Hospital during World War II.

His books have been translated into over a dozen languages ​​and have inspired Japanese, Danish and Swedish television programs based on the Henry Huggins series. A 10-part PBS series, “Ramona,” starred Canadian actress Sarah Polley. The 2010 film “Ramona and Beezus” starred actresses Joey King and Selena Gomez.

Cleary was asked what her favorite character is.

“Does your mother have a favorite child?” she answered.