“I had chicken pox, smallpox and tonsillitis in the first grade and nobody seemed to think that had anything to do with my reading trouble,” Cleary told the AP. She was a slow reader, which she blamed on illness and a mean-spirited first-grade teacher who disciplined her by snapping a steel-tipped pointer across the back of her hands. I think it comes from living in isolation on a farm the first six years of my life where my main activity was observing,” Cleary said.Ĭleary 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 school-age. People are astonished at the things I remember. “I seem to have grown up with an unusual memory. She produced two volumes of autobiography for young readers, “A Girl from Yamhill,” on her childhood, and “My Own Two Feet,” which tells the story of her college and young adult years up to the time of her first book.

She is lauded in literary circles far and wide. In 2003, she was chosen as one of the winners of the National Medal of Arts and met President George W. She was named a Living Legend in 2000 by the Library of Congress. Mouse.” “Socks,” about a cat’s struggle for acceptance when his owners have a baby, is told from the point of view of the pet himself. “Ramona and Her Father” in 1978 and “Ramona Quimby, Age 8” in 1982 were named Newbery Honor Books.Ĭleary ventured into fantasy with “The Mouse and the Motorcycle,” and the sequels “Runaway Ralph” and “Ralph S. It “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 neared her 90th birthday. Henshaw,” the touching story of a lonely boy who corresponds with a children’s book author, won the 1984 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. So when I sat down to write, I found myself writing about the sort of children I had grown up with,” Cleary said in a 1993 Associated Press interview. “As a librarian, children were always asking for books about `kids like us.′ Well, there weren’t any books about kids like them. Actress Amy Poehler penned the front section of “Ramona Quimby, Age 8 ” author Kate DiCamillo wrote the opening for “The Mouse and the Motorcycle ” and author Judy Blume wrote the foreword for “Henry Huggins.”Ĭleary, a self-described “fuddy-duddy,” said there was a simple reason she began writing children’s books.

Beverly cleary henry and ribsy