Photo: Christina Koci Hernandez / Getty Images San Francisco Chronicle
According to its editor, children’s author Beverly Cleary, born Beverly Atlee Bunn, passed away on Thursday at the age of 104 in Carmel, California. “We are saddened by the passing of Beverly Cleary, one of the most beloved children’s authors of all time,” HarperCollins Children’s Books president and editor Suzanne Murphy said in a statement on Friday. “Looking back, she used to say, ‘I’ve had a lucky life,’ and generations of kids also consider themselves lucky – lucky to have the real characters that Beverly Cleary created, including Henry Huggins, Ramona and Beezus Quimby, and Ralph S. Mouse, as true friends who helped to shape his years of growth. “
After attending Chaffey College and the University of California at Berkeley, where she met her future husband, Clarence Cleary, the author pursued a career as a children’s librarian before publishing her first novel, Henry Huggins, in 1950. In the following 49 years, Cleary wrote more than 40 books, mostly children’s novels, becoming a staple for half a century of young readers and more.
Inspired to write funny characters that her young readers could relate to, after encountering a shortage of relatable protagonists, Cleary is best known for her characters Henry Huggins and her dog Ribsy; the infamous rebel Ramona Quimby, the subject of eight books, along with his older sister Beezus Quimby; and Ralph S. Mouse, the star of The mouse and the motorcycle trilogy.
“I think children want to read about normal, ordinary children. This is what I wanted to read when I was growing up, ”Cleary told Linda Wertheimer of NPR in a 1999 interview.“ I wanted to read about the kind of boys and girls I knew in my neighborhood and at my school. And in my childhood, many years ago, children’s books seemed to be about English children, or pioneer children. And that was not what I wanted to read. And I think children like to see themselves in books. “
Among several other awards given throughout his career, Cleary won the National Book Award in 1981 for Ramona and his mother and the 1984 Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw, later received the National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment of the Arts and, in 2000, was named Living Legend of the Library of Congress.
Cleary published his latest book, Ramona worldin 1999 before retiring. According to New York Times, more than 85 million copies of Cleary’s books have been sold. Her husband passed away in 2004, Cleary left her children, Malcolm and Marianne, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.