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 HarperCollins publisher announced on Friday that the author has died on Thursday in northern California, where she has lived since 1960. No cause of death has been reported.
Trained as a librarian, Cleary started writing books until the early 30s, when she wrote “Henry Huggins”, published in 1950. Children from all over the world came to love the adventures of Huggins and 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 the paper route” 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 single 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 it 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. Others included “Ramona the Pest” and “Ramona and Her Father”. In 1981, “Ramona and Her Mother” won the National Book Award.
Cleary was not writing recently because he said he thought it was “important that writers know when to stop”.
“I even got rid of my typewriter. It was a good one, 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 a lot 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 writing prefaces for the new editions.
Actress Amy Poehler wrote the first section of “Ramona Quimby, 8 years old”; author Kate DiCamillo wrote the opening for “The Mouse and the Motorcycle;” and author Judy Blume wrote the preface to “Henry Huggins”.
Cleary, who describes herself as “stupid”, 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.
“Dear Mr. Henshaw”, the moving story of a lonely boy who corresponds to an author of a children’s book, won the John Newbery medal in 1984 for his most distinguished contribution to American children’s literature. This “happened 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 approached her 90th birthday.
“Ramona and Her Father” in 1978 and “Ramona Quimby, Age 8” in 1982 were named Newbery Honor Books.
Cleary ventured into fantasy with “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” and the sequences “Runaway Ralph” and “Ralph S. Mouse”. “Socks”, about a cat’s struggle for acceptance when its owners have a child, is told from the point of view of the pet itself.
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 President George W. Bush. She is praised in literary circles everywhere.
Tim Sloan / AFP via Getty
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 like 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 that I would write children’s stories,” she said.
Cleary graduated from junior college in Ontario, California, and from the University of California at 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 PBS series, “Ramona”, starred Canadian actress Sarah Polley. The 2010 film “Ramona and Beezus” featured actresses Joey King and Selena Gomez.
Once, Cleary was asked what her favorite character was.
“Does your mom have a favorite son?” she answered.