Beverly Cleary, the celebrated children’s author whose memories of her childhood in Oregon were shared with millions of people like Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins, died. She was 104 years old.
Cleary’s editor, HarperCollins, announced on Friday that the author has died on Thursday in northern California, where she has lived since the 1960s. No cause of death has been reported.
Trained as a librarian, Cleary started writing books until she was 30, when she wrote Henry Huggins, published in 1950. Children around the world began to love the adventures of Huggins and his neighbors Ellen Tebbits, Otis Spofford, Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby and his younger sister, Ramona. They live in a healthy, family atmosphere on Klickitat Street – a real street in Portland, Oregon, the city where Cleary spent much of his youth.
Among the titles of “Henry” were Henry and Ribsy, Henry and Rota do Papel and Henry and Beezus.
Ramona, perhaps his most well-known character, made his debut in Henry Huggins with just a brief mention.
“All the children seemed to be unique children, so I put on a little sister and she didn’t leave. She kept appearing in all the books, ”she said in a March 2016 telephone interview from her home in California.
Cleary herself was an only child and said the character was not a mirror.
“I was a well-behaved girl, not that I wanted to be,” she said. “At Ramona’s age, at that time, children played outdoors. We played hopscotch and skipped rope and I loved them and my knees were always scraped. “
In all, there were eight books about Ramona between Beezus and Ramona in 1955 and Ramona’s World in 1999.
Cleary was not writing recently because she said she felt “it’s important that writers know when to stop”.
“I even got rid of my typewriter. It was cool, but I hate typing. When I started writing, I found that I was thinking more about my typing than what I was going to say, so I wrote it by hand ”, she said in March 2016.
Although he kept the pen, Cleary re-released three of his most beloved books with three famous fans – actress Amy Poehler and authors Kate DiCamillo and Judy Blume – writing prefaces for the new editions.
Cleary, who describes herself as “fuddy-duddy,” said there was a simple reason for her to start writing children’s books.
“As a librarian, children always asked for books about ‘children like us’. Well, there was no book about children like them. So when I sat down to write, I found myself writing about the type of child I grew up with, ”said Cleary in a 1993 interview with the Associated Press.
She was named a Living Legend in 2000 by the Library of Congress. In 2003, she was chosen as one of the winners of the National Medal of Arts and met George W Bush. Her books have been awarded prizes and she is praised in literary circles around the world.
She produced two volumes of autobiography for young readers, A Girl from Yamhill, about her childhood, and My Own Two Feet, which tells the story of her college and adult youth up to the time of her first book.
“It seems that I grew up with an unusual memory. People are surprised by the things I remember. I think it comes from living alone on a farm for the first six years of my life, where my main activity was watching, ”said Cleary.
Cleary 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 of school age. She was a slow reader, who attributed the disease to a petty first-grade teacher who disciplined her by hitting a steel-tipped hand on the back of her hands.
“I had chicken pox, smallpox and tonsillitis in the first grade and no one seemed to think it had anything to do with my reading problem,” Cleary told AP. “I just got mad and rebellious.”
In the sixth or seventh grade, “I decided I was going to write children’s stories,” she said.
Cleary graduated from junior college in Ontario, California, and from the University of California, Berkeley, where she met her husband, Clarence. They were married in 1940; Clarence Cleary died in 2004. They were the parents of twins, a boy and a girl born in 1955 who inspired their book Mitch and Amy.
Cleary studied librarianship at the University of Washington and worked as a children’s librarian in Yakima, Washington, and post-librarian at Oakland Army Hospital during World War II.
His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have inspired Japanese, Danish and Swedish television programs based on the Henry Huggins series. A 10-episode series from PBS, Ramona, starred Sarah Polley. The 2010 film Ramona and Beezus featured Joey King and Selena Gomez.
Once, Cleary was asked what her favorite character was.
“Does your mom have a favorite son?” she answered.