Children want to do what the grownups do. Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.
– 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. I feel it's important to get children to enjoy reading.
– Beverly Cleary
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library: Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book, Red Fairy Book, and so on, probably down to the Puce or Chartreuse fairy tales.
– Beverly Cleary
My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.
– Beverly Cleary
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
– Beverly Cleary
When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.
– Beverly Cleary
I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.
– 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 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.