Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
Beverly Cleary

Children want to do what grownups do.
Beverly Cleary

I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.
Beverly Cleary

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.
Beverly Cleary

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.
Beverly Cleary

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.
Beverly Cleary

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.
Beverly Cleary

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.
Beverly Cleary

I read my books aloud before they were published.
Beverly Cleary

I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.
Beverly Cleary


I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
Beverly Cleary

I was a librarian.
Beverly Cleary

I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.
Beverly Cleary

I was an only child; I didn't have a sister, or sisters.
Beverly Cleary

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.
Beverly Cleary

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.
Beverly Cleary

People are inclined to say that I am Ramona. I'm not sure that's true, but I did share some experiences with her.
Beverly Cleary

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don't really read children's books.
Beverly Cleary

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
Beverly Cleary

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.
Beverly Cleary