The writer Beverly Cleary has died at the age of 104. The New York Times has an ample feature on her life and work, beginning here. HarperCollins has a Cleary website.
I’m a latecomer to the Cleary world. In adulthood, I’ve read all the Ramona books, Ellen Tebbits (my daughter’s favorite), Fifteen, Jean and Johnny, The Luckiest Girl, Sister of the Bride, and Cleary’s two memoirs, A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet. Her writing has lifted me to laughter and reduced me to tears.
Fellow kids-at-heart, I encourage you to read Beverly Cleary if you haven’t.
Related reading
All OCA Beverly Cleary posts
Friday, March 26, 2021
Beverly Cleary (1916–2021)
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comments: 4
Thank you for this memorial to one of the greats.
I’m surprised by how deeply her death hit me. Yes, she was a great writer, for children and adults.
Beverly Cleary was the first living author whose work I eagerly sought out. My longsuffering single mother would drop us at the library on Saturday afternoons to get a few hours of peace and quiet. Among the other treasures of Ursula LeGuin, L. Frank Baum, Edward Eager, the Danny Dunn and Herbert Yadon books, and so on, I loved the stories of Henry Huggins, the irrepressible Ramona Quimby, Otis Spofford, Ellen Tebbits, Runaway Ralph, and the rest. The humor and compassion of her work were a gift to a very lonely boy. If there is a heaven, I have no doubt that she has been received there, welcomed warmly by her readers who have preceded her and the parents whose children found joy and laughter and kindness in her books.
Thanks for sharing your appreciation of Beverly Cleary here.
(I was a Dunn fan too.)
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