Beloved American Children’s Author Beverly Cleary Turns 100
April 11, 2016
Beverly Cleary turns 100 years old this week, half of those years spent writing some of the most popular stories in American children’s literature. Cleary has written more than 40 books, including picture books, autobiographies, and romance novels. But she became famous, and loved, for her books about the adventures of young Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby and their friends, who live in a middle-class suburb of Portland, Oregon. Cleary’s stories became known for their humor and for their realistic and natural dialogue.
Cleary began her adult career as a librarian. Her children’s books reflect her desire to write about the kinds of rascals she met during read-aloud sessions in her library. One of Cleary’s major complaints growing up was that she could not find funny books that featured kids like her. To solve the problem, Cleary wrote her first children’s book, Henry Huggins (1950). Ramona first appeared as a major character in Beezus and Ramona (1955). Young characters from these series became stars in their own books, including Ellen Tebbits (Ellen Tebbits, 1951), Otis Spofford, (Otis Spofford, 1953), and Maggie “Muggie Maggie” Schultz (Muggie Maggie, 1990).
Cleary has been praised as one of the first American authors to include children of divorced or single-parent families in her books. She won the 1984 Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983), a novel about a sixth-grade boy named Leigh Botts. The boy’s parents are divorced and he is attending a new school—situations that confront many of Cleary’s readers. In a series of letters Leigh writes to Mr. Henshaw, his favorite author, the reader learns of Leigh’s loneliness.
Cleary also wrote several fantasies, notably a series about a talking mouse named Ralph S. Mouse, who was inspired by her son’s love of motorcycles. Ralph first appeared in The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965). Cleary also wrote about Henry Huggins’s dog Ribsy (Ribsy, 1964) and a cat named Socks (Socks, 1973).
Beverly Atlee Bunn was born on April 12, 1916, in McMinnville, Oregon. She married Clarence T. Cleary in 1940. Beverly wrote two autobiographies, A Girl from Yamhill (1988) and My Own Two Feet (1995). In addition to the Newbery Medal, she has received many other major awards and honors for her contributions to children’s literature, including the 1975 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award and the 1980 Regina Medal.
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